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A Medley of New England Poems 2

Updated on October 1, 2018

Walden Pond

Walden Pond
Walden Pond
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
The good ship Sabino
The good ship Sabino | Source

Poems

Thoreau Country


(Cochituate Pines)

Not since the temples

and shrines of Kyoto

have I seen such

mystic pagodas

reaching and spreading

with sacred incense

and glowing in slanting

sunrays that highlight their

own deep aura of

ageless yellow moss.


2

(Skater at Walden Pond)

Not the astronauts circling around earth,

nor jet pilots breaking sound barriers,

but Henry Thoreau skating over ice,

whizzing past white birch and red berries,

annihilating distance between man and nature,

recording divine correspondence in his mind.

The screaming jays and chirping chickadees,

the lofty white pines with red squirrels

were objects of his examination--

a space frontier barely penetrated.


3

(Grass Waves)

Not surprising to see

waves of grass

flow toward the sea

from high dunes of

beach plum and bayberry.


4

(Cape Cod's Own Thunder)

With its own thunder

Atlantic takes

a belly flop

far out on

Cape Cod to

startle me

back in the dunes

with storm fear

though no clouds

would confirm it.

4

(The Maine Woods)

As soon as I enter

the State of Maine,

I can clearly imagine

Henry David Thoreau

going deep into the woods

through ferns and moss all aglow

in the forest of thick black spruce,

home of the truly mythic moose.

He wished to learn what the top

of a mountain has so far from

cities and towns and masses of

people. No, for Thoreau it was

the Penobscot Indians who

had so much to teach where

all of Nature lay within their reach.


A Thoreauvian Dilemma

I am day-dreaming as I

sat at a pine-wood writing desk

but begin to feel conflicted

between a desire to depict a

spruce tree grove with dangling

gray-green moss in the midst

of a salty marsh and actually

going out there to touch their

scaly bark and smell their wet

needles on a very damp and

foggy day on the eastern shore.


Distant Isle on the Coast of Maine

I look eastward and spot a densely wooded

arc of land called Eagle Island in the

outer Casco Bay with a selvage of granite

cliffs fringe with boreal trees that entwine

the summer home of Admiral Robert Peary,

and for me the very sight of it evokes a sense

of polar wonder--a place that's out there

luring my spirit northward to narwhals

and Inuit villages at ocean's edge where

seal-skin kyacks weave in and out of bright

white ice floes amid very misty arctic seas.


Cozy Cottage

In a cottage near the shoreline

of the rugged coast of Maine,

I enjoy the warmth and crackle

of our driftwood fire on a chilly

evening quite late in August

when thoughts of returning home

to muggy New Jersey dampen our joy

of listening to the blare of foghorns

and tolling buoys marking channels

for fishing boats coming back to harbor.

Perhaps it won't be quite so bad if we

mosey back by way of Franconia

New Hampshire or old Rutland Vermont.

But the laughter of herring gulls and

the pungent smell of crashing waves

have become so much a part of me

that I'll have to tighten my belt until

apple blossom time once again.


Aboard the Sabino


We board the Sabino

in Mystic Seaport

to gently cruise toward

the sea past bridges

that rise or shift to

let us by along with

other ships except

that ours is the only

coal-fired vessel

built over a hundred

years ago in Maine.

Not much noise from

our engine's cylinders

that rise and fall

like a living organism

while we pass through

the harbor as if

in a delightful dream






Have you been to Walden Pond?

See results

© 2010 Richard Francis Fleck

working

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