At our workshop in the Carriage House last Wednesday, Kevin Bowen and Fred Marchant read a series of walking poems. Then they told us to take a walk and write about what we saw and felt, or just to sit somewhere and write about a walk we took once.
So, here’s the prompt: take a walk and then write something.
Here are a few of the poems that Fred Marchant gave us for inspiration:
Walkers with the Dawn
Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness--
Being walkers with the sun and morning.
Langston Hughes
Walking in the Woods
That's when I saw the old maple
a couple of its thick arms cracked
one arm reclining half rotted
into earth black with the delicious
hospitality of rot to the
littlest creatures
the tree not really dying living
less widely green head high
above the other leaf-crowded
trees a terrible stretch to sun
just to stay alive but if you've
liked life you do it
Grace Paley
In the Woods
In the twilight woods
the child with me
held me tightly.
We two as one,
wordless,
walked deep into the woods.
There it was,
my childhood just as I left it,
A single buck loped away.
Ko Un