If, for your evening walk, you should like a short poem to turn over in your mind, I might suggest one of these by the wonderful Philip Larkin (1922-1985). The first is among his few reasonably unglum poems. Lines 2 and 4 are really something; line 12 is no small hand, either, though seemingly simplistic.
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The next poem is also farmic, and ends with a mysterious whopper that is among my all-time favorite lines in any verse.
There Is An Evening Coming In
There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.Silken it seems at a distance, yet
When it is drawn up over the knees and breast
It brings no comfort.Where has the tree gone, that locked
Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,
That I cannot feel?What loads my hands down?
One or the other of these poems comes to mind when I’m walking the orchards of Indian Creek, and around the Ithaca countryside generally. Larkin is widely perceived as dour, but I find these to be pleasantly contemplative. Equanimity can be confused for gloom.
