Interp 12

Only This Moment Is Mine

Daniel O’Donnell

There's so many things we'd change if we lived our lives again So many things we would and would not do All the past mistakes we've made and the price that we have paid Oh how we'd live if we could start anew

But there's no going back and we can't change the past Or turn back the hands of time Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery And I know that only this moment is mine

There are things we'd never tried and tears we'd never cried If we had known the hill was far too steep We'd have never tumbled down or fallen in and drowned If we had known the river was so deep

But there's no going back and we can't change the past Or turn back the hands of time Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery And I know that only this moment is mine

So it's best if we forget the things we now regret For we cannot go back and change the past Let us use those old mistakes, a better life to make And tomorrow we may find that dream at last

For there's no going back and we can't change the past Or turn back the hands of time Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery And I know that only this moment is mine

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery And I know that only this moment is mine

An analogy is suggested for you, the intended reader, to be like a garden rose. You are like the rose; when it is time for you to act and when you are willing to act with neither hesitation nor regret. Become “sanguine,” a person that is optimistic or positive. In heraldry a blood red color is said to be sanguine, i.e. exuberant.

BRUTUS. The enemy increaseth every day;

We, at the height, are ready to decline.

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar, 4, 3

When I Am Asked

Lisel Mueller

When I am asked

how I began writing poems,

I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,

a brilliant June day,

everything blooming.

sat on a gray stone bench

in a lovingly planted garden,

but the day lilies were as deaf

as the ears of drunken sleepers

and the roses curved inward.

Nothing was black or broken

and not a leaf fell

and the sun blared endless commercials

for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench

ringed with the ingenue faces

of pink and white impatiens

and placed my grief

in the mouth of language,

the only thing that would grieve with me.