Poem Project – entry #5 Going to Walden

Going to Walden    by Mary Oliver

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.

Another poem by Mary Oliver.  I love how her sparse lines summarize volumes of thinking.  My mind creates images as I read her verses line by line, tripping merrily down the garden path.  And then I stumble upon a key – and I have to go back to the beginning again, put the key in the hole and re-read the whole thing again, with new eyes – and usually new images.

“Going to Walden is not so easy a thing..”