In Which I am Reminded of Old Dreams

Ok, so April is almost over, but it is National Poetry Month, and I never gave even a nod to that, which seems oh-so-wrong. I didn't carry around a poem in my pocket on Poem-in-Your-Pocket day. And then Monday was Earthday, and I didn't say anything about that, either.

So here's my nod to NaPoMo and Earthday both, and also to the part of myself that has always been a little Thoreauvian and would like to run away to a cabin in the woods and be a hermit.

When I was seventeen, I told my friends that was my career plan. Except at the same age I also wanted to be the essay-writer for the back of Time Magazine, so I suppose I'd have had to own a computer. Or else come down off the mountain once in awhile to read the news and send off my essay. Which makes the whole hermit-in-the-woods thing seem not very hermitish.

Neither of those plans have come to anything. I'm married with five children and live in a city. Which isn't such a bad thing, after all. I do grow beans and write. And occasionally things are peaceful. Like when everyone's at school and I'm walking on the mountain or writing my brains out. But once in awhile I have to dust off Yeats and Thoreau.

So here's to what might have been:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.