Make Right the Time (Danny Schmidt)

SONG: Make Right the Time by Danny Schmidt

BOOK: Poetic Logic: The Role of Metaphor in Thought, Language, and Culture by Marcel Danesi

POEM: The Hour by Michael Lind

Maybe the moment recurs daily at six, when commuters,

freed from the staring computers,

elbow and bump in unsought intimacy on a station

platform with you, and frustration

rots what is left of your strength. Maybe the hour comes after

dinner, when televised laughter

seeps from a neighboring room; maybe the time is the dead of

night, when you ponder, instead of

dreaming. Whatever the time, you will escape it—by sinking

down with a book, or by drinking

secretly out in the dark studio, or by unbuckling

pants on a stranger, or chuckling,

one with a mob, in a deep theater. Soon, though, the hour

comes to corrode all your power,

pleasure and faith with the damp dread that it daily assigns you.

How you evade it defines you.

QUOTE: "When I am asked by young poets what advice I have to offer them about the conduct of their lives, I am inclined to warn them about the dangers of hothouse anemia. “Do something else, ” I tell them, “develop any other skill to turn to any other branch of knowledge. Learn how to use your hands. Try woodworking, birdwatching, gardening, sailing, weaving, pottery, archaeology, oceanography, spelunking, animal husbandry — take your pick. Whatever activity you engage in, as a trade or hobby or field study, will tone up your body and clear your head. At the very least it will help you with your metaphors.” ~ Stanley Kunitz