IN THOREAU’S CABIN (AT NIGHT)

In Thoreau’s Cabin at night, at Lincoln-Sudbury,
all lantern-lit, windows  glowing like foxfire,
the silence astounds me. I am stunned.
My ears are plugged up with darkness.

I hear my pen. It scratches its way across the
paper like a meteor scribing a path through
the heavens, then my heartbeat, my breaths,
a cacophony that deafens me.

The entire universe now crammed in here with
me, an implosion of consciousness. I rush
back to the nuclei of myself, how it started.
Finally, clarity, room enough to think.

My mind becomes vast. It rushes through space.
It laps up on beaches somewhere in the cosmos.
Night creeps toward the cabin. It peeks into the windows.
I sit in the middle, alone in the chair.

June 7, 2007

 

All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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