Winter transitions into Spring and back again. Sleet taps on my window while early flowers poke their heads out testing the air. A succession, one follows another as ice becomes water and miniature worlds open for discovery.
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“After ripeness and fruition: dispersal, circulation, renewal. Not death but succession”
The keeper of the woodlot
learns, when oak is cut
pine will grow, just as
oak replaces pine
Oak wood from the
squirrel-borne seed
Pine wood from those
wind blown
Birch in line from
seed carried in
a Spring freshet
Willow on a muddy
bank born in clusters
of seed down
The pitch-pine seed
skating over snowfield
pushed by wind to
the far corners
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Faith in a Seed
The humble seed
progenitor
present, past, future
Thus organized
life proceeds
It’s own path followed
Memory and insight
as riverbed sand
crafting itself
in waters flow
“Who could believe in prophecies that the world would end, while one milkweed with faith matured it’s seeds”
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Emergence
As from sleep we awake
tossing off the
cover of winter
Stretching and seeking
The warm earth
alive with renewal
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“No wonder the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly”
Unfolding
Like the butterfly
unfolding new wings
the leaf too
opens to the sun
Nature, at once,
practical and whimsical
is pleased to repeat
in patterns of a leaf
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Relationship
The way the raindrop
curls unto itself so
gentle on the petal
Touching, yet separate
Alone, yet not
Life is relationship
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City Lights
Seeing it differently
I thought to myself
yes, there is beauty
here
but something else
how can I say
some paradox, some irony
in
being on this
mountainside at
night in cold thin
air
looking down on twinkling
city lights with the stars
of the heavens
above
that we prefer
gazing down with pride
rather than up with
humility
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“I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put a foot through, woods were the Wood Thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and the day is forever unproved”
To walk with Thoreau is to venture far but remain close. To explore a Walden Pond or a Concord woodlot and see the cosmos.
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The Traveler
I prefer to travel
in place
To walk familiar ground
seeking unfamiliar things
To travel deep within
visiting mysteries and wonders
seeing new worlds as
from the borderland
I prefer to travel
slowly
Seeing with more than
just the eye
the way the moonlight
moves across the water
or the spring wind
twists the leaves just so
I prefer to travel
quietly
Allowing silence to
be my guide
as the footfalls of
the fox are heard
by none and the
fish swim unnoticed
I prefer to travel
unseen
Invisible in the market place
unknown to the woodland trail
like the dew
of an early morning
erased by the
sun’s first light
I prefer to travel in
peace
With a mind unfettered
and a heart open
the way the heavens
caress the blue earth
as the day begins
anew
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Quotations from the writings of Henry David Thoreau
Miniatures; the world in a raindrop.
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