How very nice it is after working all day,
To come back home and quietly wile away,
Your leisure hours in many pleasant ways,
Easing the pressures of your present days.
Life is a round of lots of things to do,
Demands are made, and we must see them through,
Our brains get muddled and we cannot think,
For our minds are forever teetering on the brink!
There's loads of 'remedies' for sale out there,
Said to solve strain and stress, but do beware,
These remedies are not quite what you need,
The 'slowing down' is where you will succeed.
For we go rushing on at such a speed,
Pounding away without the time to 'heed'
Like the methodical clock that's ticking on the wall,
There is no time to stop or even stall.
Everyone is on a fast conveyor belt,
Tensions mount and then the panic's felt,
We must slow down now, and set the pace,
For ourselves in this mad frantic race.
Time was, when life for us was calm and steady,
Running like a slow and gentle eddy,
Life was hard but had it's rhythmic progress,
Taking time, saved us from certain distress.
There's no escape now from our daily toil,
We seem to be permanently on the boil,
That's why our leisure time gives us an easing,
For going at such a speed, is just not pleasing.
Something has got to give, to make us stop,
And realise that if we don't, we're going to drop!
We are not machines that can go on forever,
We may be bright, and OK we may be clever.
But what use is that if we no longer function,
When we have gone and reached the final junction,
There's one way left and that is up to you,
Look after yourself, and to yourself be true.
Be happy, be cheerful, be relaxed and calm,
Do nothing that is too quick to cause alarm
Your body and brain, you must keep steady and sure,
And you will undoubtedly live, to one hundred and four!
© Ernestine Northover
I'm glad that I took the time to slow down for this one.Lovely write and so well written.Love Duncan
Ernestine, I like this poem very much and the message is sound, sent so much better too I think in rhyme. Thanks Egal Bohen..
Great advice, Ernestine, and I hope I can follow it. It's nice to see another poet who practices in rhyme here at the home of elitist post-moderners. My only suggestion would be a closer adherence to meter. Thanks for the poem.
I'm not for sure that my body and brain have ever been that steady and sure, but thanks for the poem, I am for slowing down.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Ernestine>>>Was reading through some of your older work & stopped on a dime when i came upon this piece, as it is the epidome of how we should treat, look at & live life...You have such an absolute mantra about your poems on lifestyle & nature & this particular pice is (in my view) the mainframe to so many of the mastered works you have written since....Solid craftwork...Structural melliflousity to astute locution... fjr