Motivation for Monday

 

I'm not sure what happens to my brain in the summer. I can barely get my thoughts down in my journal with my morning tea before I am off to any number of non-writing related tasks.

And I have plenty of revisions to do, a poetry chapbook manuscript, two middle-grade novels, countless poems. I have letters that should be written and emails responded to.

But there are other pulls this time of year like the garden, the lake, the woods, sitting outside with my girls and reading books. Mushroom hunting season has begun and berry season follows behind and not long after that it will be time for canning.


So I thought I'd share a poem with you.(Even though it's really for me) Happy Monday!

Wake up. Day calls you
BY Pedro Salinas  

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your bodys metal.
cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.