I can see the mountains shining days ahead

Beverly and I went walking in the Bird Sanctuary in Andover Saturday. She’s been walking daily for the past week and I certainly need to regain my hiking legs. I am not a winter person and for all intents and purposes hibernate the colder months away. I’m not a young person any longer either, so such hibernation along with a desk job combined with an aversion to rote exercise makes for an out-of-shape boy.

This month I will need to walk as much as possible so the coming months may be enjoyed. Life is short and nature too breathtaking. I’m reminded of this Mary Oliver poem:


Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds
I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I'm fooled--
I'm wading along

in the sunlight--
and I'm sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead--
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week's trees,
and I plan to be there soon--
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don't know where
such certainty comes from--
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind--

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage--
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way