Time For Life Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

I have no patience for ambition.
I have no energy for jealousy.
I have no desire to compare
My beauty, my status, my wit
With everyone or any one.

I do not imitate.
I will not strive
To reach some ideal
Defined by those
Who do not write.

I will stop and stay awhile with Frost.
I will contemplate Emily and her lover Death.
I will trail behind Basho on his lonely roads.
I will sit and witness Shakespeare upon his stage.

And then I will retreat into my own soul
I will let my silence grow until it rises
In its own time, in its own rhyme
To find its own forms.

Whether it breathes meaning into life
Or dies upon its own empty weight,
Whether it reaches a reader's inner ear
Or is repelled by her intellectual defenses,
Only the purity of my aim and time
Can decide.