Collected Poems that Strike Me

The Light Continues
Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while:
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don't expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.
~Linda Gregg

Happy Life
At my desk all morning
In the woods all afternoon
Headed home now
through the yellow light . . .
~ David Budbill,

Western Sky
There is one advantage
in walking eastward
these afternoons, at least,
that in returning you may have
the western sky before you.
~HDT October 20, 1858

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

November 11

November 11, 2017

7 Α . M. - To Hubbard Bathing-Place. 

A fine, calm, frosty morning, a resonant and clear air except a slight white vapor which escaped being frozen or perchance is the steam of the melting frost. 

Bracing cold, and exhilarating sunlight on russet and frosty fields. I wear mittens now. 

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. 

Aster puniceus left. 

A little feathery frost on the dead weeds and grasses, especially about water, - springs and brooks (though now slightly frozen), where was some vapor in the night. 

I notice also this little frostwork about the mouth of a woodchuck's hole, where, perhaps, was a warm, moist breath from the interior, perchance from the chuck! 

 А. M. - To Fair Haven Pond by boat. 

The morning is so calm and pleasant, winter-like, that I must spend the forenoon abroad.

The river is smooth as polished silver. 

A little ice has formed along the shore in shallow bays five or six rods wide. It is for the most part of crystals imperfectly united, shaped like birds' tracks, and breaks with a pleasant crisp sound when it feels the undulations produced by my boat. 

I hear a linaria-like mew from some birds that fly over. 

Some muskrat-houses have received a slight addition in the night. The one I opened day before yesterday has been covered again, though not yet raised so high as before. 

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore, and in one place nightshade berries. 

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. 

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood through the clear, echoing, resonant air, and the lowing of cattle. 

It is rare that the water is smooth in the forenoon. It is now as smooth as in a summer evening or a September or October afternoon.

There is frost on all the weeds that rise above the water or ice. 

The Polygonum Hydropiper is the most conspicuous, abundant, and enduring of those in the water. 

I see the spire of one white with frost-crystals, a perfect imitation at a little distance of its loose and narrow spike of white flowers, that have withered. 

I have noticed no turtles since October 31st, and no frogs for a still longer time. 

At the bathing-place I looked for clams, in summer almost as thick as paving-stones there, and found none. They have probably removed into deeper water and into the mud (?). When did they move? 

The jays are seen and heard more of late, their plumage apparently not dimmed at all. 

I counted nineteen muskrat-cabins between Hubbard Bathing-Place and Hubbard's further wood, this side the Hollowell place, from two to four feet high. They thus help materially to raise and form the river-bank. 

I opened one by the Hubbard Bridge. The floor of chamber was two feet or more beneath the top and one foot above the water. It was quite warm from the recent presence of the inhabitants. 

I heard the peculiar plunge of one close by.  The instant one has put his eyes noiselessly above water he plunges like a flash, showing tail, and with a very loud sound, the first notice you have of his proximity, –that he has been there, – as loud as if he had struck a solid substance. 

This had a sort of double bed, the whole about two feet long by one foot wide and seven or eight inches high, floored thinly with dry meadow-grass. 

There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they eat. I find the roots gnawed off. Do they eat flagroot? A good deal of a small green hypnum-like river-weed forms the mouthfuls in their masonry. It makes a good sponge to mop the boat with! 

The wind has risen and sky overcast. 

I stop at Lee's Cliff, and there is a Veronica serpyllifolia out. Sail back. 

Scared up two small ducks, perhaps teal. I had not seen any of late. They have probably almost all gone south.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 11, 1853

I wear mittens now. See November 11, 1851 (”A bright, but cold day, finger-cold. One must next wear gloves, put his hands in winter quarters.”); See also February 12, 1854 ("I begin to dream of summer even. I take off my mittens.")

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket. See November 11, 1850 ("Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and are not yet dead . . . Food for walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, – apple of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.");  See also December 19, 1850 ("The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider.")

I hear the cawing of crows toward the distant wood. See November 1, 1853 ("I only hear some crows toward the woods."); January 12, 1855 ("I hear faintly the cawing of a crow far, far away, echoing from some unseen wood-side . . .I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I hear a faint cricket (or locust?) still, even after the slight snow. See November 8, 1853 ("Perchance I heard the last cricket of the season yesterday. They chirp here and there at longer and longer intervals, till the snow quenches their song."); November 11, 1858 ("I hear here a faint creaking of two or three crickets or locustæ. . . They are quite silent long before sunset.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cricket in November

The hips of the late rose still show abundantly along the shore. See July 23, 1860 ("The late rose is now in prime along the river, a pale rose-color but very delicate, keeping up the memory of roses."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Rose

November 11. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 11

I wear mittens now.

I hear the cawing of crows

toward the distant wood.

Apples are frozen on the trees and rattle like stones in my pocket.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Apples are frozen on the trees 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, 

 "A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-531111