Walk, I, and: Walk, III, and: Walk, IV, and: Walk, VI, and: Walk, IX, and: Walk, X
2024; University of Missouri; Volume: 47; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mis.2024.a923748
ISSN1548-9930
Autores ResumoWalk, I, and: Walk, III, and: Walk, IV, and: Walk, VI, and: Walk, IX, and: Walk, X Fleda Brown (bio) Walk, I After a mile or so arthritis begins to tighten my backand I start trudging, walking to keep on walking,which is what you have to do. Through the cattails,the soft wood of the boardwalk, a relief from the pavement.The cattails have shed to flaky white, stalks crushedin wide swaths. Did you know they're edible? The wholeplant! I also talk to someone when I walk, not myself or God.Maybe you. I imagine someone reading my thoughtslike a book, so I'd better think something interesting.Maybe deer bed down in the crushed stalks.But then again, it's wet in there. There are recipesonline for making flour from cattail pollen. You just shake itinto a bag. They say you can get several poundswithout half trying. There's a recipe for pollen pancakes.Yummy! the recipe says. It warns to check for polluted soil.When I tell you things you may not have known, I feelthe poem has at least provided something interesting.After the boardwalk I cross the road where the plaque isfor the Black Willow Champion Tree of Michigan, deadof old age, its trunk crumbled to shreds. A champion treeis the biggest of its kind. I've often thought of writinga poem about it. The poem would say that nothing lasts,but you already know that, so the tree goes onbreaking down unsung, and I keep on walking with myarthritis past its fallen tangle of branches beside the stream.I didn't mention the stream. Every time I walk by I thinkat first it's distant traffic, until I see the gleamingfrom under the leaves. The willow-muse was named forZeus's nurse Helice, which means willow, sacred to poets.Most things have a story to make them more interesting.When we hear it, we think we've discovered their secret, [End Page 179] but actually they're our stories, bouncing back at uslike a mirror, while the tree or whatever goes on beingitself. What I was thinking was like a breeze, a smalldisruption, that passed down the path without a trace. [End Page 180] Walk, III When I'm walking, I am totally inside experience.It flows by me, I break it into waves. I think I wantto write a poem about that, but the idea is somundane, made up of only the two parting sides,observation and reflection, inner and outer, stirredinto a pudding. The two massive trunks of the copperbeech tree across the street have grown together,their smooth old skin drooping around its knotholes,top branches lopped off because of diseaseor something. What happened to the copper beechI planted in our dreary subdivision in Delaware, backwhen I was married to misery? They last up to120 years, but their shallow roots make them morevulnerable to the elements, which then includedpaint fumes from the Chrysler plant and no decenttopsoil, mostly clay, the earth having been strippedfor planting houses. The effort to find the treeon the Google Earth of my past, plus my arthritis,has slowed down this so-called poem. It likes to actas if it's simply coming into being on its own alongthe way, which is the suspension of disbeliefnecessary. You need that, and loss, to make a poem:something yearning because otherwise how could itgo anywhere? And it needs folds in space, so timeseems to disappear. I notice I'm now headed downthe paved path through the marsh. Near Division,the homeless have pitched tents in the pines, leavinga great mass of trash alongside. They can't be blamedbecause where are the trash bins? And they are insidetheir lives, not pondering the condition of theirsurroundings. I take a picture to send to the properauthorities. The homeless deserve public services,too. Along the path, also, the milkweed pods havesprung their passengers along the lines of...
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