Two Meditations on Walking with the Dead
Preface
Some poems live twice.
The first that follows was written as an act of praise, an offering to Thoreau’s fierce clarity, his refusal to trade solitude for comfort. It speaks in the cadence of tradition, where rhyme is not a cage but a bell.
The second is a letting-go of that form: an open-field meditation shaped more by silence than by meter. It listens rather than declares.
Both walk the same trail at different hours of the day.
Both, I think, arrive at the same pond.
_______________
I. To Thoreau, in Fieldstone Words
I went out where the hard winds howl,
Where trees lean in and roots break stone;
The world was sharp, the air was foul,
But there I found your voice alone.
And I went where fields are stiff with weed,
And granite humps the shallow ground;
The alder broke, the sumac bleeds,
And half the barns are falling down.
The roads run quick to town these days,
Past stores that sell a different gold;
But you, you spoke of older ways -
Of how the woods are never sold.
The pine leans in. The owl calls low.
The pond still holds its stubborn glass.
The world you knew still wears its woe,
Still bends beneath the weight of brass.
You taught that man is more than gears,
More than the grind of hand and clock,
You measured out the richer years
In acorns dropping on the rock.
I read you when the night gets thick,
When frost turns roots to sharpened bone;
You walk these hills with birchwood stick,
And claim the stillness as your own.
The crows know well what men forget,
The fox runs light where we run blind,
You spoke in truths too rough to fret,
Too wild to fit a brambled mind.
So here’s my thanks, from mud and thorn,
From rutted path and broken wall -
You left your mark on things well-worn,
And taught me how to love them all.
_______________
II. To Thoreau, in Fieldstone Words
I went out where the frost still bites the stone,
where the wind carries the smell of bark and iron.
No one followed.
That was the point.
The trees leaned the way tired men lean -
half against hope, half against gravity.
Some had lost branches in last winter’s storm,
but kept the stance of survivors.
Every step cracked a secret.
Under the crusted grass
were the small bones of roots,
and under that, silence...
the kind you can’t tell from prayer.
I thought of you,
the man who made a hut into a scripture,
who measured wealth
by the height of bean stalks,
by the mirror-still pond
that refused to give away its depth.
The road to town hums now
with engines and convenience.
Still, a hawk wheels over the marsh
and names no owner.
Still, the pine leans toward its reflection
as if to say, enough.
I read you when the dark presses close,
when frost whitens the sill.
You walk beside me then -
not as saint or sermon,
but as someone who listened long enough
to hear the world breathe.
The fox passes,
light-footed,
certain of everything I keep forgetting.
And I think...
this is the gospel you left us:
to love what is ordinary
until it shines,
to stand in the cold
and call it home.
_______________
III. Concord at Dusk
By late light, Concord feels less like a town than a lingering thought. The air turns to amber, and the pond, whichever pond you stand beside - mirrors more than sky. It reflects the shape of attention. That’s what Thoreau taught, I think: that attention is the truest form of prayer.
When I walk the quiet paths behind our house on Boulevard and Street, I sometimes hear him still - the dry crunch of leaves, the deliberate rhythm of a man who believed the smallest act, done deliberately, could outlast the noise of empires. The Steady One walks beside me, Linus up ahead, his tail a metronome of joy. And I realize that what he called deliberate living was never about retreat at all. It was about return - learning to come back to what the world keeps offering: wind in grass, frost on bark, the breath between two people who choose to walk together through the ordinary evening.
GBS
2018
0 Comments