Photo courtesy stock.xchng.com

In this endearing short poem by Californian Trish Dugger, we can imagine “what if?” What if we had been given “a baker’s dozen of hearts?” I imagine many more and various love poems would be written. Here Ms. Dugger, Poet Laureate of the City of Encinitas, makes fine use of the one patched but good heart she has. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

Spare Parts

We barge out of the womb
with two of them: eyes, ears,

arms, hands, legs, feet.
Only one heart. Not a good

plan. God should know we
need at least a dozen,

a baker’s dozen of hearts.
They break like Easter eggs

hidden in the grass,
stepped on and smashed.

My own heart is patched,
bandaged, taped, barely

the same shape it once was
when it beat fast for you.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Trish Dugger. Reprinted from Magee Park Poets: Anthology 2007, No. 18, Friends of the Carlsbad City Library, 2006, by permission of Trish Dugger. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

While I vacuum, I like to listen to music on my iPod—it muffles the noise, and the right songs keep me moving and make me feel cheerful. I usually just put the iPod on “shuffle,” but certain songs slow down my rhythm. I like to vacuum to something a bit more upbeat, so I decided I should make myself a “vacuuming playlist.” The songs on it would be the ones that make me feel like dancing around the vacuum cleaner, like Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music,” or Rob Thomas’ “This is How a Heart Breaks” and MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

Wouldn't it be fun to make a playlist for all my activities, like writing or driving, or just sitting and thinking? For writing, I prefer instrumental music, so I can hear my own words without being distracted by others’. My favorite writing songs come from guitarist Billy McLaughlin’s* album, Out of Hand.

When I’m driving, I want words and lots of them, because I like to sing along. Songs like Evanescence’s “My Immortal,”  and show tunes like “Good Morning Baltimore” from Hairspray and “For Good”  from Wicked are fantastic for belting out while driving down the road.

For sitting and thinking, there’s always Carbon Leaf’s “What About Everything?” or classical music, or something by Josh Groban.

You could make playlists for all kinds of experiences and emotions: feel-good songs, I-need-a-good-cry songs, revenge songs… you name it. My friend Marianne just made a playlist of hockey songs in honor of our local professional hockey team’s presence in the Stanley Cup playoffs! (I didn’t know there were that many songs about hockey!)

Does your life have a soundtrack? What’s on your favorite playlist?

*While checking the spelling of Mr. McLaughlin’s name for this blog post, I learned of his remarkable and inspiring comeback story—read about it here.)

Take time to smell me.

I don’t know about you, but this is what happens when I rush:

I break things. Dishes, fingernails, even, recently, my laptop monitor because I rushed to pick it up. I nearly broke my new mini book light when at first I couldn’t figure out how to open the battery door. (Hint: it helps to look at the clearly labeled diagram.)

I hurt myself. I bruise my leg on the open dishwasher door, or the footboard of my son’s bed. I whack my forearm on the doorknob in the hallway, or the back of my head on a fence I’m leaning through.

I hurt others. Being in a rush means my mind is often elsewhere. When this is the case, I’m not looking at or listening to the person right in front of me. (And if I’ve done this to you, let me apologize right now.)

What's your hurry?

“Rushing blinds you to the obvious. Rushing comes from fear and is designed to keep you from looking down into the canyon and seeing how tenuous your perch on the wire is,” writes Heather Sellers, in Chapter After Chapter. She’s talking specifically here about rushing while writing, but I think it’s one reason so many of us rush through our own lives. We’re afraid. Afraid of letting someone down, afraid we’re not accomplishing enough, afraid life is passing us by—when it’s really us passing life by. It will not matter how much you “accomplish” if you’re not paying full attention when you accomplish it.

In order to slow down, I have to make some hard choices. I limit my activities, even, alas, the fun ones, so that I truly experience the ones that remain. I also cut the daily to-do list in half, and I don’t compare what I can get done in a day with what my friend down the street accomplishes. I lower my standards in certain areas. I’m not always successful—but I’m working on it.

Do you find yourself rushing through your days? What have you done, or do you plan to do to slow down?

Last week Laure Ferlita and I took a field trip to the University of South Florida’s Botanical Gardens. Laure’s preparing an online class, “An Imaginary Visit to the Garden,” and I haven’t been to the gardens since last year’s trip to the spring plant festival.

The USFBG is a relaxed and friendly sort of garden. Mostly cared for by volunteers, it’s the perfect place to wander aimlessly, forgetting the world speeding by on the major streets that run on two sides of the garden. The carnivorous plants bloomed

and this lovely gentleman

But of all the areas of the garden we visited, my favorite this time was:


Faery (or fairy) houses, musical frogs, gnomes and fairies of all sorts peeked out from the plantings of impatiens, violas, ornamental cabbage and other magical plants.