finding walden

Our poetry group met last night for the last time this season. The exercises have produced the beginnings of new work, and that's good. We looked at a Mary Oliver poem, "Going to Walden" and D.B. Johnson's picture book Henry Works. Oliver writes,

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
New and Selected Poems, Volume One, p. 239

Johnson ends his story with Henry David Thoreau writing, "Today I took a walk in the woods." But his walk included watering milkweed, picking huckleberries and delivering wild strawberry plants. All this before he began the work of writing.

I want to try harder to find Walden where I am. Part of my Walden is a cabin in Maine- a phone, no tv, simple food, walks, swims, kayaking.

Raindrops drum the tin-hard roof,
drip down the dense cedars.
Loon giggles stipple the lake,
keeping the white pines awake.

It's almost time!