Shiki
also wrote that the
beginning poet should constantly take walks and travel all over,
in every season.
The
subjects of his poems need not be restricted to famous places, however; if one
looked about calmly and carefully, subjects
could be found everywhere.
Even
in a little garden where one could take no more than than ten steps, the poet might find a
new subject every day.
Thus, it was not the poem-journey itself that
was the absolute value, but the observation of nature: the former was the
means to the latter.
NOTE:
A lot of my walking lately is done in my mind and I think I do it to
relieve other nagging concerns that just won't quit.
I walk in my sleep and talk in my sleep, but it’s fine because, as Shiki says, walking reveals and illuminates.
Walking the
dogs tonight, I noticed
how our tree array in the pre-summer evening light looks like the cover of the Yale Younger Poets edition of John Ashbery’s Some
Trees I used to own, a book that once meant so much to me.
