My Resolutions

“Time catches up suddenly to us all,” the comedian Garrison Keillor writes. “One day you’re young and brilliant and sullen to your elders, and the next you’re getting junk mail from the American Association of Retired Persons and people your very own age are talking about pension plans and the prostrate. A sense of mortality should make us smarter. Life is short, so do your work. You spend more time attending to music and art and literature, less time arguing about politics. You plant trees. You cook spaghetti sauce. You talk to children. You don’t let your life be eaten by salesmen and evangelists and the circuses of the media.”

In that spirit, here are my resolutions for 2009.

I will put first things last.

I will study a sunset.

I will discover a color.

I will memorize clouds.

I will be amphibious.

I will listen to my kids more and to politicans less.

I will ride into the high country.

I will savor.

I will enjoy.

I will hope.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter---and the Bird is on the Wing.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Won't you be my valentine?
I will be thine!

To life!