Cranes May not be at Lake

If you're like me, you spend a lot of time (too much?) thinking about the future: planning, projecting, then revising those plans and projections. Do it enough, and you can come to believe that what is imagined will actually happen, guaranteed! Of course it rarely does—life is full of the unexpected and wild who'd-a-thought-its—but does that stop us from plunging right back into planning and projecting? Nope. Apparently, this is the nature of being human. Which is fine, I guess, as long as it's not at the expense of the present. As Oregon's first Poet Laureate, William Stafford put in his wonderful poem, "You Reading This, Be Ready": "What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?"