A Walk in the Woods

This one isn’t a lecture. It’s not well written, and there’s not much of a story. This is just a handful of photos, taken on a crisp fall day at Bushkill Falls.

See, I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. Anxiety keeps me up. Last night, I read some poetry. It didn’t help me sleep, but it felt good anyway. This line, for example:

There is that in me — I do not know what it is — but I know it is in me.

–Walt Whitman

I don’t know what, exactly, is keeping me up.

But I do know that walking in the woods feels better than most anything, and that reading quality poetry helps me feel less alone. Poetry doesn’t have to make sense. If you get something, great. If not, no big deal. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known
—Rumi

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
—Wallace Stevens

When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn’s call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Finally, one that’s too, too good. So no excerpts. Here’s the whole thing:

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
—Pablo Neruda, “If You Forget Me”