Write a Walking Poem

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, take a walk and 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