May 5, 2020

Becoming Peripatetic

The secret is walking. All the greats do it,
all the way back to Aristotle and beyond.
It's a rule, a law the way gravity is a law:
if you want to think well, walk well – and long.

Walk alone or in company, walk the city
streets and the woods, if you can still find
them. Walk, observe, listen. Feel the way
your hips swing to loosen mind joints.

Notice, float, wander, converge. The one
who walks knows things other travelers do
not: how the wild rose colonizes this brush
pile and what makes for human distance.

It's about time, and scale. If you wish to
recover time, walk about. Its rhythms and
peaces are there for the taking, on the scale
of one who collects blueberries in a bucket.

Modestly, that is, and without rush – other
than the rush and pump of blood, rich with
oxygen to jazz the brain. Amble, rove, err
on the side of the road, or off of it entirely.