It seems that I need to learn again and again this simple life lesson: small miracles are rare; never let them slip past, because they will be gone forever. Just as we started up the Alum Cave Trail Sunday, I stopped to tighten my boot-laces, right in front of a large group of 20 or so hikers. Eager to get started again in front of them, I hurried my lacing and started walking, and just then Martha spotted something tacked to the trunk of a River Birch tree: a small piece of green paper containing a poem. It was a Walt Whitman poem, and I should have stopped right there and read it from beginning to end, and photographed it, miracle that it was to see a poem on a tree on this trail. But I did not, and on the return trip we looked in vain for this little unread poem.
What
beautiful free spirit had posted a Whitman poem on this tree? Now it is gone, and someone else has perhaps
taken it down and marveled at it and put it in a pocket.
I
think it may have been the beginning of this poem:
Song
of the Open Road
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the
open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading
wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I
myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no
more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries,
querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open
road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any
nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong
to them.
And
now I am inspired to print one of my own poems on a scrap of green paper the
next time I hike this trail and pin it to the rough bark of a River Birch. For anyone to stop and read who has learned
the lesson.
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