May 07, 2021

Going to Walden


It isn’t very far as highways lie. 

I might be back by nightfall, having seen

The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.

Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.

They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

 

Many have gone, and think me half a fool

To miss a day away in the cool country.

Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,

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.

Mary Oliver, The River Styx, Ohio and Other Poems (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1972)

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