tramping, after Thoreau

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. ~Thoreau


on a given day, if i feel out of balance
i realize it's usually not what i ate,
or whose company i shared;
it's more my not being
among nature's sweet sheen,
her multicolored blanket of awakening

as if she really cared, where i've been;
no dear lady,  it's my missing thee:
that huge rock, fields of waving ferns leaving
me dizzy; the cluster of downy ducklings,
the rising &  the dropping-
scales of water within the pond,

rippling blues and greens,
my circumambulations around
the small still waters
where poems are spun-
dreams once buried, become

spring shoots, filling,
spilling over trellis....
painting pinks on roughened pine;
contrasts curtailing the busy mind-
a perfectly unfurled rose,
unequaled equipoise


Kate Lamberg
6/9/12