Funny the snippets of poetry that never leave your head — or whole poems (Frosts “On Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” took up squatters rights the moment I first read it)… I was given Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” (written in 1681 — they don’t write ‘dirty poems’ like they used to…) in high school and fell instantly in love with it.  Well, who wouldn’t?  But one line — the pivot — kinda stands as the headline:  “But at my back I always hear, times wing-ed chariot hurrying near” (it’s Marvell’s basic come-on — I want you now because you’re young and beautiful but when you’re older…).

I’m sure Marvell himself was no prize — and I hope whatever woman he was with told him so.  Repeatedly.  Still — he wasn’t writing now, he was writing 400 years ago under very different rules and standards.  He gets cut a degree of slack (but only a degree).

That line flitters across my consciousness on a pretty regular basis.  It would, I guess.  But it doesn’t scare me.  Instead it says: “Be More Efficient With Your Time(, Stupid)”.