Poetic interlude. A pause for the cause after the exertion of yesterday’s post. A brief surge of male potency, and now the receding of the fire. After all, I’m not eighteen or twenty years old anymore. Systole and then the diastole.

In the quiet gently flowing stillness of early evening I sit down on a bench and pull out a book. Cracking it open I read:

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and the sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and then filter them from yourself.”

Ah, good old soft eyed lushly bearded Walt Whitman. “You shall take things from all sides and then filter them from yourself.” I like that. Something to live by….

Only, what if instead of all sides from which to take things there is only one side? What if, growing up in say suburbia the range of experience available to us is limited to the point of not providing enough nutrients for the soul’s soil, so to speak?

How are we to grow to our fullest height when our roots are sunk in rocky, sandy, infertile ground?

Oh well, Xenon has likened us to plants straining towards the light of the sun, the one difference being that we are free to pick up and go in search of richer soil.

And isn’t that precisely what we see all around us, with all the longing for travel and experience, the delving into books, the return to school for second and third degrees?

May your roots be sunk in rich fertile soil.

The time has come for me to move along. What a wonderful end to the day. As the sun slowly sinks towards the City’s skyline to the west the River seems to grow calmer. Insects gather together and hover in thick clouds. The odd bicyclist and jogger passes by on the path behind me.

Thanks for stopping by…