timing is everything

timing is everything 
by Gerald Locklin

the horoscope this morning
really put me on my guard,
sent the adrenalin coursing
through my veins,
as it predicted a crucial confrontation
that would require all the will and
ingenuity that i could muster …

until i remembered i was looking at
a week-old student newspaper.

"timing is everything" by Gerald Locklin from Poets and Pleasure Seekers. © Spout Hill Press, 2015. 

A Different Drummer

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?

. . .Walden by Henry David Thoreau 1854