7.2.2023 – of course we are loaned

Of course we are loaned
this life, suddenly one day
it is overdue

Of course we are loaned this life, then suddenly one day it’s overdue.

This is a little tight and nifty but so was Rochefoucauld.

I fully expect to make a long walk to Virgo to see the clusters of a trillion stars. I wonder how they counted them?

I had worried about reaching the year 2000, at which I’ve been successful.

All my dark dreams about dying young like so many in my humble trade never happened.

Hundreds warned me I was going to die young from smoking and drinking but I disappointed them.

From the essay Courage and Survival by Jim Harrison in The Brick.

One of Jim Harrison’s last published works.

I quote a lot.

That’s the whole point of this blog and these haiku.

To point out the wonderful word combinations that real writers accomplish in print and bring to the attention of my vast audience.

I don’t like to change the original word order of anyone’s work.

I especially don’t like to change the original word order just to make in my American grammar school haiku rhythm of 5 – 7 – 5 syllables (and yes I have read all the arguments about this and that Japanese sound patterns and English syllables are not necessarily equivalent but its my blog my rules and my rules say a haiku, for the purpose of this blog, follows the 5 -7 -5 pattern so there) but I did in this case and the change made quite the impact.

Mr. Harrison wrote: Of course we are loaned this life, then suddenly one day it’s overdue.

Which, due to the 5 – 7 – 5 rule, I hammered into:

of course we are loaned
this life then suddenly it’s
one day overdue

In a way, I liked that.

I like that a lot.

Suddenly, it’s one day overdue.

Overdue or just one day overdue, when we are talking about the loan of life is the same and yet it isn’t.

Just one day …

Can I have just one day more …

One more day …

Just one day or not, life has no amnesty day or forgiveness policy.

I have to wonder if Mr. Harrison would have liked and I can say, with pretty much solid confidence, he would NOT.

Famously he refused to talk to an editor for years who dared edit something he wrote.

With that in mind, I stayed with the phrase and worked it into:

Of course we are loaned
this life, suddenly one day
it is overdue

I had to split the contraction of it’s to it is.

Mr. Harrison still would have rolled his eyes.

But there it is.