far

Poetry

Hiking with Thoreau

Reed Venrick
issue four

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Who wrote that: the mass

Of men and women lead lives

Of quiet Desperation,

Remembering…not those elegant,

Convoluted lines, well-writ, but pausing

To recall how, as the French express it:

Thoreau “learned me” the consciousness

Of the forest, since all around, I smelled

Blooming-sweet spring oaks in those

I passed and counted nearby, and circles 

Of hundreds more that interspersed with

Sweet bays, elderberry bushes, myrtle

Shrubs—climbing trumpet flower vines,

Wind-swept love grass and golden-rod

Faces grinning ‘round the wetland’s 

Spade lilies with purple-finger blooms, where 

Thousands struggle to breathe together 

Through cattail dust in the marsh, manifesting

Fragile forms—straining, stretching for clouds,

Like me, hardly breathing this 93 degrees, 

Here on a stifling afternoon on a trail,

And I, pausing before the sun’s stroking,

Stretching longleaf pines—bursting needle

Bouquets spotlighting thickets of palmetto

Palms, and, now, glancing aside—witness

To one palm’s frond extend its’ blade-

Fingers reaching to grasp the sun’s-slicing

Rays before they spear into the forest floor, 

As I—extending a hand, turn my wrist to 

An open palm, spreading fingers to over-

Lap the blades of the palm’s green fan

To feel the hot rays of the sun’s fire

On my hand—realizing that this palm 

Tree must also revel in that intensity

Of our fading home star—this petite 

Palm, no taller than my shoulder-line,

Half-healthy, but anxious to manifest its’

Elegant design, given a rough-rooted place

In the salty sand of a peninsula, where

It will never grow tall, not even fulfill

Its parent’s vertical line, here between

The seas, ocean-to-gulf, while I, lingering 

Long beside the stunted palm, yet realizing 

We both feel the cooling rain and fierce wind 

Of a Florida-fall’s-hurricane, and turning,

Recalling Thoreau, that literary woodsman, 

That I’m disoriented on an unfamiliar trail, 

So I pause again to lean on a tree having 

Lost my bearings and squinting into a burnt-

Burgundy twilight of a tropical island’s 

Coming night. Thoreau “Learned me” 

Not by memorizing Latin names, but by 

Pointing toward a challenging path, 

Where I struggle to breathe through

A long humid straw of hay-fever spring.