The Art of Loafing

 Dr Abe V Rotor

 UST graduate students on a field trip, Peñablanca, Pampanga, 2010

Be like Thoreau and Darwin,

world's greatest loafers,

toying ideas that shock the world

by Civil Disobedience,

and Survival of the Fittest.

For the mind soars to the sky

by imagination more than reason,

and time is kindest

when the body stops working

and the spirit calm,

To nurture the hidden genius,

in sparks and spurts,

otherwise spilled to waste

in worries and cares,

and undue haste.

Churchill by the Thames,

painted peace,

when the sky was burning,

and thunder and bomb

were but one sound.

Audubon's birds were real

like living specimens,

with time at his command;

and Solomon halted his army

to let the ants pass in band.

Loafing, the habit and the art,

robs and rewards:

he by the hearth falls asleep

in spring; and who fishes ideas

with a fishing pole. ~