Poems & Prayers

The introduction to this section addresses questions such as, “How much time do we have in life? How do we manage that time? Who do we want to spend it with?” (55). 

Several of the poems address various kinds of temporality, such as our perception of the passage of time, or how we understand larger swathes of time, such as the past and the future. “Backswing,” named for a golf term, is about a moment when time seems to stand still. This happens during the takeaway, or the initial part of a golf swing, when the golfer moves his club back from the ball before executing the backswing. “Back to the Future” suggests that imagining the future is really about looking back at the past. The poem offers a series of paradoxes that suggest the contradictory nature of our experience and our attempts to find balance and opportunity. In “Twice the Time” he regrets living too much in the future; always rushing instead of being fully aware of the present moment. Too much haste cannot make up for time lost in the past. “More Time” outlines creative ways to find more time to enjoy life. 

Other poems consider a variety of mental processes that are more tangentially related to time.