'Spring Again' puts me in mind of this from Bellow, Max.
“Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, in the eye of the storm… Art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”
Walking is always good for managing, allowing and relegating distractions I find.
I like the way you render the 'funny mix' of past and present, both cyclical and 'doubling back'. And 'lopsiding' is choice.
Bill
> On 11 Jun 2015, at 12:40 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Spring Again
>
> Stepping once more forward
> into fresh morning wakens
> me doubly - am I doubling back?
>
> Now and again, and now, the past
> appears to my mind’s eye, alive
> as if to be lived again.
>
> And so much more of it
> than there is of present! -
> whether pains or pleasures
>
> or that funny mix, that brew
> of old pains strangely sweetened,
> woken, recreated now.
>
> So much Now is merely
> got through, forgettable.
> What lives on in memory
>
> seems of value, otherwise
> it would have been crowded out,
> overwritten, faded, erased.
>
> Oh experiences of value
> surely have vanished too!
> And yes, one ought to be
>
> ‘fully alive in the present’.
> Pay attention! your reward
> is abundant significance -
>
> no need to remind me of this.
> But with the best will in the Now
> mind keeps being flooded,
>
> invaded from below
> by a warm comforting flow
> as if now weren’t warm also!
>
> For others the word refuge
> may apply - I’m no refugee,
> striding Seattle’s hills,
>
> breathing in spring perfumes.
> Ah, how that takes me back.
> I’m walking Auckland - early
>
> work-mornings again - suburban
> front gardens in fresh bloom,
> more spring in my stepping,
>
> my postie’s leather-satchel
> shoulder-strap lopsiding me,
> squandering my bloom of youth
>
> then in such moments - then
> and gone - yet not gone, here again.
> Lopsided still, thanks to the leash
>
> in my hand, a young dog
> breathing it all in, keeping me
> moving, now - well, much of me.
>
> Auckland 1957 - Seattle, May 2015
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