Poems for September

VIII.

Always in the distance

the sound of cars is passing

on the road, that simplest form

going only two ways,

both ways away. And I

have been there in that going.

But now I rest and am

apart, a part of the form

of the woods always arriving

from all directions home,

this cell of wild sound,

the hush of the trees, singers

hidden among the leaves –

a form whose history is old,

needful, unknown, and bright

as the history of the stars

that tremble in the sky at night

like leaves of a great tree.

XXII.

There is a day

when the road neither

comes nor goes, and the way

is not a way but a place.

XXIII.

The watcher comes, knowing the small

knowledge of his life in this body

in this place in this world. He comes

to a place of rest where he cannot

mistake himself as larger than he is,

the place of the gray flycatcher,

the yellow butterfly, the green dragonfly,

the white violet, the columbine,

where he cannot mistake himself

as more graced or graceful than he is.

At the woods’ edge, the wild rose

is in bloom, beauty and consolation

always in excess of thought.

The Peace of Wild Things (Penguin: 2018).

Beautiful moments of rest (resting within rest) from a farm in Kentucky.

IM