A Hill Walking Poem Part Two: The Romantic Poet

And where is that poem I sensed in sleep? It may be caught within a swirling wind and cannot come to rest, or trapped in the crevice where two huge boulders lean and cannot break free, or it may need its deep sleep, stretched out on dry grass. The poem has its own life, it certainly knows the hour of its birth, and will arrive propelled by rhythms of mind and nature in tandem. Its impulse is always toward revelation. I wonder what impulse drives me: Do I walk these grasslands and climb these hills to provoke the poems whose writing is my familiar fulfillment? Or do I write poems to justify my ceaseless walking to no discernible goal? Will it matter if I find today's poem barely floating on the green slime of a stagnant pond? Will it be improved if I find it crowned with solar glory on the high ledge above a river valley? The poem will ever be the middle ground between Nature and myself. And so all things occur in their immediate motions - grasses, hills, sunlight, my self, the animals, the unwritten poems, plants and flowers and the life-pregnant soil, the waters and the swirling air. All fold together despite their strangeness, their separateness. And I, the poet of this moment, imagine how a natural love makes them familiars, and dream it can last for evermore... Oh, blessed persuasion! The poem is even now within my ken! I can be quiet now. It comes apace!