Just recently, I found myself settling into a pattern of daily existence. It’s been a long time in coming, since I am prone to making daily To Do lists but then flagrantly ignoring them.
My pattern includes an hour of piano practice, an exercise regime, a writing regime, and an hour or more of reading in the evening. I’ve had the goal of doing this for quite some time, but just within the past day or two did I realize that I have actually incorporated this pattern into my life. And it has nothing to do with To Do lists. It’s just part of my routine now.
It brings to mind a poem by Amy Lowell ntitled “Patterns.” Published originally in 1915, it strikes me as a polemic against war. It’s a story poem related by a woman who is engaged to be married. She is alone in her garden, absorbing the news that her fiancй is dead, killed during the First World War fighting for the Duke of Flanders.
She projects herself into the future, mentally declaring she will walk the garden, clothed in the same straight-laced brocade of the time, never loosening herself to someone else, and weeping for the loss.
The last four lines of the lengthy poem read:
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
I don’t have an answer, except that the pattern that has formed in my life is the antithesis of Amy Lowell’s. I wish that we might have compared notes.
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