5 Poems to Take Walking

Walking and writing poetry go hand in hand. Poets and philosophers throughout time have been walkers. There is something about moving through a landscape under your own steam; moving over it but touching it; on it and part of it. There is something too about the rhythm of the walk, the falling into line with your own heart’s beat, and a heightened awareness of all that is alive around us.

We walk, and we feel alive. We feel alive and feel the aliveness around us. We can go one step further, look closer, listen with new ears—how would we explain this to someone else? What could we offer? The feel of the air, the sounds, colours, and scents. The way the light falls, the people or animals we pass, the character of the trees we pass under…

A walk is enhanced when we pay attention to what is happening around us. Get in the mood for walking, and noticing, with these five poems about walking.

1.

A MORNING WALK

This morning I
walked in the rain, bleary eyed
startled a feeding hawk
tore the palm of my hand
while picking a blackberry breakfast
(six ripe, one tart and underdone)
then came upon cattle in my favourite field
and moodily turned for home
composing a poem
keeping its beat
to the fall of my feet,
lines of late summer
with its dew and dry grass
bringing me home
soaked and happy.

2.

FEATHERS

Each morning I walk the valley
treading the same worn path,
though no bird flies over the same way twice,
the bees attend different flowers,
cicadas sing where yesterday there were none,
and the hawk is scanning new trees.
A feather lies in wait for me,
having fallen from the sky.
No feather will fall in quite the same way;
not in this spot, from that height,
to be caught between two heads of rye.
The land looks the same each day
but is different in a thousand small ways.
We wake thinking one day is much like another,
that we are still who we were the day before,
or we can let ourselves be changed.
We are as new as the world we see;
what looks familiar is not.
Notice what is happening, be the response to your day.
Be delighted, be surprised,
expect feathers.

3.

HOW TO FIND THINGS

Go early.
Flush blackbirds from hedges,
let the cat find warm trails
of hedgehog, pukeko,
quail.

Be mindful
of the hedgerows,
fringe dwellers,
dream keepers sweeping
night clear for day.

See the dew, settled
on the dessicated grass; the lawn, adorned
with spiderwebs clouds,
a camp of one thousand tents.

See your nose, pinked;
your breath in small clouds.
feel your fingers
numbing.

Go where you flow to,
expecting nothing
but joy.
Let it be enough—

one fallen leaf,
one stem of summer grass,
one blackberry,
chilled overnight
in earth’s larder.

4.

overcast

This is not a nothing day.
The pines are whistling,
cypress trunks squeaking in the wind,
cicadas have started to sing.
Two fantails just tore right by me, unafraid,
undeterred by my clicking camera,
ignoring me and my pen.
The cat was already out here,
as if she knew I’d be coming.
Who can resist a brewing storm?

Here too,
the dragonfly looking for a mate,
bumblebees courting clover,
passing by plants
discarded and forgotten—
crocosmia, blue salvia,
a lump of unruly lonicera.
The blackberry, nearly ripe,
scents the thickening air.
Goldenrod feeds the cinnabar moth,
and now
I have found where the deer sleep.

Under the leaden sky
I follow the chewed ends of grass
along the fenceline
into the neighbouring field.
I’m an animal now,
ignoring boundaries,
tracking, smelling my way
hungry for connection
while above me
the air becomes
grey blankets.
This is not a nothing day.

5.

when gifted an early morning

When gifted an early morning,
when something wakes you, holds you
in its pre-dawn hand and will not let you go,
this is what it is not—
it is not for getting a jump on things,
not for ticking more off the list,
for squeezing more in, wringing more out
of your already spoken-for day.

When gifted an early morning
it is for taking in the dawn chorus,
seeing what it means to wake alive and expectant.
It is for noticing the birdsong fall away
and the sky lighten.
It is for seeing the first flush of light
on the underside of clouds, for seeing them
pink and blush and bruise mauve,
fall away and grey again.

It is for watching the birds shift gear,
to watch them feeding and preening,
it is for noting that rosellas, landing,
wings outstretched in bare trees,
look like crosses pinned to a drop of lacy shawl.
Notice the second flush of sunrise,
the sun cresting the hill,
the clouds warmed and golden
when gifted an early morning.