The white birch saplings choiring in a praise
of sunlight, spring, late April, the little voices
of nature’s chorus for the clearing that was
the place of action. Human beings were
doing what they do there with foolish food
and rancorous wine. The moss was
probably misinformed; it chanted its chant
on two changes, like the Grateful Dead
over and over. The granite outcrop
against which the creatures of thought
sat leaning in their blondness was of quieter
intent. But the clearing, the clearing!-and who
had suppressed the trees there to clarify
a forest for these thinkers and wine-drinkers?
My dears, a great misconception amounting
to a misdemeanor, for the forest did it, this
clearing is as the clearing of water when
a cloud uncovers the sun, as the
brightening of the western sky when the storm has
passed over. That is what a clearing is.
This lightening of the labyrinthine is as
lovely as if no thought had ever thought it,
the forest’s own affect, enjoyed by that
patch of trailing arbutus in the granite’s
lap and benediction. Let’s go home.