And where is that poem I sensed in sleep?
It may be caught within a swirling wind and
cannot come to rest, or trapped in the crevice
where two huge boulders lean and cannot break
free, or it may need its deep sleep, stretched out
on dry grass. The poem has its own life, it certainly
knows the hour of its birth, and will arrive
propelled by rhythms of mind and nature in tandem.
Its impulse is always toward revelation.
I wonder what impulse drives me: Do I walk
these grasslands and climb these hills to provoke
the poems whose writing is my familiar fulfillment?
Or do I write poems to justify my ceaseless walking
to no discernible goal? Will it matter if I find
today's poem barely floating on the green slime
of a stagnant pond? Will it be improved if I find it
crowned with solar glory on the high ledge
above a river valley? The poem will ever be
the middle ground between Nature and myself.
And so all things occur in their immediate motions -
grasses, hills, sunlight, my self, the animals,
the unwritten poems, plants and flowers and
the life-pregnant soil, the waters and the swirling air.
All fold together despite their strangeness,
their separateness. And I, the poet of this moment,
imagine how a natural love makes them familiars,
and dream it can last for evermore...
Oh, blessed persuasion! The poem is even now
within my ken! I can be quiet now. It comes apace!