How do you not have the time?

 A friend asked me "how do you get to have the time to sit down and write poetry?"

Having taken a minute to ponder I think I now know why it took me so long to respond, the question was not correct, it was the wrong question. The right question should have been "how do you not have the time for poetry?"

How do you not have the time 

To see the pattering of the afternoon clouds

Or the silent shadows of the evening winds

How do you not hear the chorale of the ants in the grass

As they march on the way to their dark-sweet homes

The setting sun urging them, yet 

They have not forgotten to take a moment 

To smell the flowers along the way

 

But men do not have the time

For patterings or evenings, we are busy 

Getting rich or dying trying, tho' surely dying

Beclouded by the jillion shades of our fleeting bliss

And the ready-made gloom of not getting

The world truly is too much with us, yes.

We forget that nature is ours.