Living in the Moment Part Two

I've noted this idea in the past--the one that says we constantly look backwards or forwards, pondering incidents that happened or wondering where we are headed.  On the other hand, dogs don't have that capacity. They live now, pursuing only "that brilliant dragonfly called pleasure." Fine, they have smaller brains and less complicated thought processes (although some days I wonder what I have going on up there), but why can't we try this? I think truly happy people must be talented at savoring moments as they happen and experiencing the things we strive for but often don't realize we have until they are behind us. By then we can only look back and wonder where we were.

I think Maxine Kumin's poem rather nicely and simply sums it up.  And we get some nice images in the process.

In the Moment

Maxine Kumin

Some days the pond

wears a glaze of yellow pollen

Some days it is clean-swept.

The trout leap up, feasting on insects.

A modest size, it sits

like a soup tureen in a surround of white

pine where Rosie, 14 lbs., some sort 

of rescued terrier, part bat

(the ears), part anteater (the nose),

shyly paddles in the shallows

for salamanders, frogs

and little painted turtles.  She logged

ten years down south in a kennel, secured

in a crate at night.  Her heart murmur

will carry her off, no one can say when.

Meanwhile she is rapt in

the moment, our hearts leap up observing.

Dogs live in the moment, pursuing

that brilliant dragonfly called pleasure.

Only we, sunstruck in this azure

day, must drag along the backpacks

of our past, must peer into the bottom muck

of what's to come, scanning the plot

for words that say another year, or not.

Reprinted from The Writer's Almanac