After doing the poetry meme yesterday, I'm inspired to give you a Jane Kenyon poem I read recently and really liked. It's also appropriate for the upcoming season:
Depression in WinterI like this poem because it reminds me of how wonderful it is to walk in the woods in winter -- to notice little things like the thawed space near the rock Kenyon is describing, and to see green things here and there, as a reminder that spring will come soon. The Hobgoblin and I have done a lot of winter hiking, sometimes involving laboring our way through several feet of snow and occasionally involving temperatures barely in the double digits. There's nothing more exhilarating than a tramp through the snow and nothing nicer than coming home again and warming up with a hot shower and some food.
There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
A crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green ....
I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness --
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.
But Kenyon's not talking about that kind of walk -- the poem also reminds me of how well a walk in the woods can transform my mood. I never come home feeling the same as when I left. I think I know what Kenyon means by being "greedy for unhappiness" -- I get like that sometimes: mildly depressed and doing my best to stay that way. And a walk will almost always break me out of that rut; whether it's seeing something beautiful like Kenyon did in the poem, or whether it's the movement and exercise that does it, I don't know, but I rarely come home from a walk unhappy.
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