I Meant To Do My Work Today
Do you know this poem? It's been running in my head all day, a counterpoint to what little I've gotten done.
I Meant to Do My Work Today
I meant to do my work to-day -
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand -
So what could I do but laugh and go?
Richard Le Gallienne
It certainly has nothing to do with today. Outside looks like this. No birdsong, no butterfly, and certainly no leaves. 
This is what Shakespeare had in mind in Lear: "all's cheerless, dark, and deadly." So why do I feel so optimistic? Especially when you consider today's precursor, a.k.a. yesterday's knitting.
This may not look like much. You have no idea what it took to get me here.
Miscounting (hence the return to stitch markers. Elizabeth Zimmermann says she never uses them. I am so clearly not in her league.) Did I mention, miscounting repeatedly?
Misjudging. My most even cast-on is still the long-tail. I ran out of yarn. Twice. Is anyone surprised?
I finally got my 220 stitches on, and knit about half-way around. By this time, I had two boys doing their imitation of the ravening horde. I'm a reasonably responsible parent. More practically, I know the dangers of low blood sugar - dinner can get ugly if it's late. Dinner delayed is dinner denied.
Imagine my chagrin when I turned from the stove to find Marco "knitting" and, well, chortling. There's no other word for it. He was so taken with himself. Except he lost half a dozen stitches from the cast on. I don't know how to pick up those stitches. Now, I may have been a little hypoglycemic myself. I have knitting books. I'm sure somewhere I have instructions for how to do this particular repair. Last night, I could care less. I yanked the whole bloody thing off the needles. Sad but true.
What a difference a day makes. It stinks out there. The most mid-winter of all possible mid-winter days. Hail. Thunder. Rain. Wind. Flood watches. Turning back to snow. I certainly have none of the excuses Le Gallienne had. But I turned my back on all my responsibilities, well, as many as I could. Wrote to Clare. Read. Untangled my yarn and accomplished this.
No, it sure doesn't look like much. I know I'll have to pay the time back. I am still strangely refreshed and rejuvenated.
Maybe it's March?
4 comments:
Did you know there's another (middle) verse to your poem "I meant to do my work today"?
And the buttercups nodded their shining heads
Greeting the bees who came to call
And I asked the lizard the time of day
As he sunned himself on a moss-grown wall.
To Anonymous #1:
Elton John not only capitalized on Le Gallienne's lovely little poem I Meant to Do My Work Today but also gilded the lily in tacking on underwhelming if not maudlin stanzas. Thereupon, the ego-bound songster Sir Elton (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight) embraced the creation as if it were his own. A knight of the realm, indeed! The prolific poet and prose writer Richard Le Gallienne, native of Liverpool-England, was born in 1886 and died the year that Elton John was hatched, i.e., 1947. The irony is not lost.
La Gallienne's original precisely wrought work was recalled correctly by our much admired Wool Gatherer.
I Meant To Do My Work Today
I meant to do my work today--
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand--
So what could I do but laugh and go?
Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)
I really don't think that's what Shakespeare meant by "All's cheerless, dark and deadly"! Great poem though.
What, you don't think screwing up your knitting on a grey day is on the same level as "Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves and desperately are dead"?
Well, I guess you could have point.
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