After Galway Kinnell . . .

. . . who wrote a series of poems beginning

and ending with . . .

 

 

  

"When one has lived a long time alone"

Epiphanies come less often late in life,

Such religion as you may have come to

Simply the rites and rituals of repetition

Learned so well and done so often that

Praise and prayer are just the everyday

Acts of what each season asks of us

And gives in return and in proportion.

And too to live a long time in one place

Is not without pilgrimage and revelation,

How each time the woods are subtly

Or spectacularly changed, the stream

A little shifted in its course of stones,

Old paths followed and new ones found.

Here nothing ever questions whether

It is holy, and what is faith, in the end,

But the place one comes to believe in

"When one has lived a long time alone."





Poetry by countryfog
Read 639 times
Written on 2013-07-20 at 17:25

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
I enjoyed this poem, Fog, and I've enjoyed the responses to it. People react so differently. Jim and Joe homed in on the idea of solitude. Elle focused on how one's home can be a holy place. My reaction was similar to Elle's. I'm alone a lot of the time, so that aspect of the poem didn't attract my notice. My home and the land around it are sacred to me. I enjoyed your comment regarding epiphanies. They do seem to diminish with age, probably because life comes to be so familiar and routine.
2013-07-28


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
I have often sought out aloneness. My boat is my refuge and being aboard alone is my retreat from the world. A very familiar space that is in constant flux from its ever changing environment. Always the same and always different.
2013-07-24



All but four months of my life have been lived with family, roommates, or my spouse and children. To live a long time alone, I wonder how I would perceive life. This is an insight as to how it might be. Reliance on oneself would have to the key to happiness, which seems like a good thing.
2013-07-22


Elle The PoetBay support member heart!
It is the spirituality of this poem that comes through - the simple act of life and seasons, wherever you are, perhaps where you have spent the greater majority of life, as you get older you see the beauty more, I think so - I have a special place where I live, which calms me more than anywhere - thank you

Elle
2013-07-21