Walking without disturbing the leaves…
Like the lines of a song, you want to hear, sing it one more time.
So it can be with poems: a sense that it was saying more than it simply seemed.
Like this one:
” SOMETIMES”
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
……………….DAVID WHYTE, from his book,
River Flow, New & Selected Poems, 1984-2007
I recall being 11 years old, new to Norwalk, CT, where roads and hills
were still open and growing. Part of this new life was the experience of
learning to walk the woods around a local lake exactly as the poem
says, breathing like the ones in the old stories, without a sound.
Dears, that was 85 years ago. I have learned how to listen to my body’s
memories as new and curious experiences guide me through this changing world.
I like the idea of treating these new ways as a way to walk without disturbing
the leaves.
always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette
