I Am an Impatient Man

June 28 2020

I am an impatient man.

As if the universe

would bend to my will.

As if time

were not indifferent,

proceeding

at its steady pace

no matter how wishfully

I plead and rail.

Not that I haven't been told

that good things come to those who wait.

That patience is a virtue.

That the slowest trees

bear the best fruit.

Yet what am I to think

in the heady days of June,

when nature teems

and the garden is abundant?

When plants drink-in the sun

greedy for growth,

shouldering their neighbours aside

as they reach ever upward.

When, in the desiccating heat

they burrow their roots deeper

into wet dark soil

before the dryness can kill

the shallow and slow.

And later, when the harvest will not wait.

Before the tomatoes succumb

to cutworm and stink bug.

Before the onion tops shrivel

their potent bulbs rot.

Before browning lettuce withers

and radishes go soft,

peppers decompose

and broccoli starts to bolt.

Nature can't afford to wait,

dithering and dawdling on some leisurely walk

through the indolent summer months.

She must spread her seed

set her buds

fatten up her roots,

before the cool nights of August

and the first killer frost.

Because there's only so much time

before winter descends.

Before the tall corn slumps

the leaves turn black

the golden tassels rot.

Before the forever darkness comes;

when time no longer counts

and all that waiting was for naught.

There is something I've been very impatient about for quite awhile, and I could see how it might very well lead to some poor decision-making. So – even though I'm not quite sure how or why – I'm grateful that I've recently found myself far more philosophical and serene about this. Which isn't of any interest to anyone but me, but will explain why I thought it might be fun to noodle around with the idea of impatience.

Although impatience is often regarded as a vice, passivity and surrendering to fate are not necessarily any more virtuous. Should one be a man of action, or a man who waits for things to happen? I'm not generally a procrastinator, yet have sometimes been rewarded when I inadvertently let things slide. But then, of course, there are those many other times when opportunity is lost.

There is a strong temptation to cliche here: the early bird gets the worm; strike while the iron is hot; good things come to those who wait. I allowed myself one.

When the garden metaphor struck me, it inevitably led to fall and winter, and I couldn't help visualizing the shrivelled stems and blackened leaves. So, once again, I ended up writing a poem about death! Which may have been foreshadowed by my use of “kills” and then “killer frost”, and should become clear when, in the closing stanza, the darkness of winter becomes “the forever darkness”. The end of life, when we rarely regret what we did nearly as much as we regret what we didn't. So the patient man, who serenely waits for the fullness of time, may end up more disappointed than his impatient counterpart.