I’ve written much poetry through the years, but always in occasional bursts, seasonal storms of inspiration that produce five to ten new poems and then no more.  I hope I can begin writing poems more often, but until then, I wanted to start something new (and add some regular content to the blog) by introducing Friday Poems, a regular series in which I’ll post an old poem every Friday.

Today’s poem was written when I was teaching high school English at Freeman Academy.  We were reading Walden by Thoreau and so I took my junior class to the prairie arboretum behind the school in hopes that they would more readily identify with the text and in some way, catch a bit more of Thoreau’s message.

I brought you here today with hopes

That cricket calls and autumn breezes

And the fading warmth of sun

Might somehow help,

Might somehow call you as a class

Into a Thoreauvian trance.

You would read a bit,

Raise your eyes from the page and ponder-

“I went to the woods . . .”

“I did not wish to live what was not life . . .”

“I wanted to live deep and suck the out all the marrow . . .”

“Our life is frittered away by detail . . .”

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity . . .”

But your minds were swept up in

“Saint Vitus’ dance” of cheap talk and flirting

and hanging out as friends.

Born was a  gazebo sanctuary

Of talk and procrastination and

The sweet scent of friendship.

Perhaps today was a failure.

Perhaps, success unseen.

October 2, 2006