Children at play give personalities to lifeless objects, and we don’t need to give up that pleasure as we grow older. Poets are good at discerning life within what otherwise might seem lifeless. Here the poet Peter Pereira, a family physician in the Seattle area, contemplates a smiling statue, and in that moment of contemplation the smile is given by the statue to the man. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Garden Buddha

Gift of a friend, the stone Buddha sits zazen,   

prayer beads clutched in his chubby fingers.   

Through snow, icy rain, the riot of spring flowers,   

he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always   

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.   

Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness?   

The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,   

filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia   

and yearning.  He’s laughing at me, isn’t he?   

The seasons wheeling despite my photographs   

and notes, my desire to make them pause.   

Is that the lesson?  That stasis, this holding on,   

is not life?  Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,   

its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;   

the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers   

exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.   

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 © 2007 by Peter Pereira. Reprinted from What’s Written on the Body by Peter Pereira, Copper Canyon Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 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.

My mind seizes the opportunity to highlight whatever flaws and character defects it wants me to know about, thrusting them up for consideration. I think of three more things, minor but necessary, that I will add to the to-do list for the week. I feel overwhelmed by how long that list is growing. Soon I’m having a full-blown anxiety attack and all hope for immediate sleep has fled. I know that I lead a richly blessed life—that I am not in need in any real way. But tell that to my mind at 2 a.m.

I repair to the guest room where I turn the TV on low, just loud enough that I can barely hear it. I find this soothing. Eventually I fall asleep, only to be woken at 4:18 a.m. by my son’s alarm clock, the aptly-named Sonic Bomb. I storm into his room, which adjoins the guest room, and change the time on his alarm to a more reasonable hour, muttering imprecations (Why was the alarm set for 4:18 in the first place? Inquiring minds still want to know.) However, he hit the snooze button at 4:18, instead of turning off the alarm, so it goes off again at 4:28.  This time, the dog, who sleeps with him, decides she requires a bathroom break.

By now, it’s getting dangerously close to the time my own alarm clock is set for. Should I try to get a little more sleep? Do I need the TV again? Mmm, this bed is pretty comfortable...

Wait—is that my husband getting his coffee in the kitchen?

Nuts.

What do you do at 2 a.m.?

I’ll tell you how I’m doing…what was my word of the year again?

Yup. Haven’t paid one bit of attention to the concept after the initial excitement of choosing the word. Am I afraid of it? Unsure where to start? Too busy with daily life to ponder what passion means to me and how to get more of it in my life? Probably a little of all those things. I’ve done a few things that I feel passionate about—rode and played with Tank, traveled, took an art class—but I haven’t connected passion with any of those things.  I haven’t let it motivate me or keep me going when I wanted to quit. I haven’t allowed it to flow through me the way I wanted to.

So. What now? Well, I have half a year left—I mean to make the most of it. I’ll start asking myself what I feel passion for, or even how I can ignite passion about some of my less-exciting everyday activities. With a little more thoughtfulness and imagination, the second half of 2012 may turn out to be more exciting (in a good way) than the first half. That’s one of the beauties of life: every day you can start over, take one more baby step towards the life you want to lead.

If you chose a word of the year, how has it influenced you so far? And if you didn't, has your year seemed to have any kind of theme?

“Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”

— Jane Austen, Emma

I don’t know how many of you like to travel, but I love it. (You may have guessed that from some of my posts.) I don’t do as much of it as I’d like to, and until the day comes when I can take off on a whim for parts unknown, I’ll make do with armchair travel—which, come to think of it, would be good for those who do not want to travel, but would like to broaden their knowledge of the world in general.

Of course, reading books and watching movies set in different cities and countries is one of the best ways to get a taste of a location. My favorite getaway movies include Shirley Valentine, My Life in Ruins and Under the Tuscan Sun.  For books, I often return to old favorites The Enchanted April (also an excellent movie) or one of Mary Stewart’s older novels, set in Greece: This Rough Magic, The Moon-Spinners or My Brother Michael, for example.

Now, however, there are even more ways to get your travel fix without leaving your comfortable home. The internet has brought us closer together in a number of ways—there are websites devoted to cities, counties and nations with photos that can transport you there with the click of a mouse.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you could learn a language. Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur and Tell Me More are three well-respected, fee-based options. You could also check out free podcasts on iTunes and elsewhere, or check out websites such as learnalanguage.com.

My current method of enjoying armchair travel is Laure Ferlita’s Imaginary Trip to Greece (see Imaginarytrips.com for a list of all Laure’s terrific classes). Not only am I improving my sketching skills, I’m also learning more about Greece with every lesson.

Whether I’m looking at someone else’s pictures or creating my own, armchair travel keeps me (somewhat) satisfied in between actual trips. How do you satisfy your yen for travel?