National Poetry Month: Grady Thrasher

"I Meant to Drive to Work Today"

Grady Thrasher

I meant to drive to work today.

I was up at dawn to join the fray.

The city with its office towers

Required me for at least eight hours.

But a birdsong beckoned me to stay

And being early anyway,

A few more minutes could do no harm

To watch the sun rise o’er the farm.

I saw the sun paint all the flowers

With colors of the daylight hours.

Then a butterfly floated gently past

On a scented breeze that held me fast.

I knew I should be leaving soon,

But circling swallows kept me ‘til noon.

Then red-winged blackbirds seemed to chatter

That another hour could hardly matter.

By afternoon I couldn’t part

From nature’s feathered works of art,

As crimson cardinals and purple martins

Chirped “Now’s no time to be departing!”

As shadows grew long, I thought of town,

But a magenta sunset held me bound

By its stunning skyworks light revival,

While whippoorwills hailed nighttime’s arrival.

I might have gone to work today,

I could have earned my daily pay,

But Nature’s treasures bade me stay—

And a beckoning birdsong got in my way.

"I Meant to Drive to Work Today" is included in the illustrated book Tim and Sally's Year in Poems, by Grady Thrasher with art by Elaine Hearn Rabon. This is the third book in the series. Thrasher has said of the poem's inclusion in a book created for pre-schoolers that “I could see my own personality coming out in that one ... My own personality as a parent came out. ... The storyline is Tim and Sally are studying poetry in school, and they write rhymes about the seasons.” The Tim and Sally series of books has a web site: www.timandsally.com and Thrasher is currently at work on another book in the series. He was named Georgia Author of the Year in Children's Picture Books, 2008.