I Pause Before Beginning To Work Poem by Shalom Freedman

I take a deep breath
I am reluctant to begin
It is always difficult to begin
But once its done
One wonders why the difficulty-
I am delaying again
I am a delayer by nature
I want to put the hard things the duty off
I am still pausing
Pausing as I write
I must reread and correct work I have already done
Will I do this really
Or skip over the hard part
And do it quite poorly
As I so often do?
I am an imprecise delayer
And an almost total failure in my practical life-
I am delaying still-
How strange that I when I began to write this
I felt so happy and so hopeful-
Now I know I must not delay too much longer
And the sunny bright day outside has turned to grey before my window
And I pause again and think and pause again
And wait until I finish this
And move to do what I should have done hours ago
And will do too late and too quickly and too poorly
As I am-