Roots and rocks emerge from the forest path like half-
      spoken thoughts,
or as Thoreau would put it, the earth is saying “rock.” And
      saying “root,"
too, and tiny bright red mushrooms and green moss worn
      smooth like a poem
one’s fingered for years. Bedraggled cattails, a few yellow,
      early-fallen
leaves, but summer lingers—the scented air is warm and
      spangled with sunlit
motes. Roots make earthen steps, but here, where my
      favorite tree
stands like the pine in a Japanese poem, roots multiply, so
      that I need

to walk with care on the uneven earth. But I need to get
      near this tree, I need
it for a poem, recycled from the Japanese. As I walk, I need
      my thoughts
to take in the rocks and roots, those thoughts still half-spoken
      by the earth.
But this is silly—I am old enough to know that neither the
      earth nor the sun
thinks, or cares what I think, or needs to be put in a poem.
      Nor does a tree.
It is presumption to think this, or think that to be old, and
      to walk in the fall
woods and say that the earth is uttering rocks is all right
      because one is a poet.

Nor will it do to think about one’s age in the fall woods, or
      write poems
about leaves turning, hair and seasons turning, etc. There is
      no need
for a poem like that—it has been done already by plenty of
      other poets.
Even the pine, looking so Japanese here by the pond where
      yellow leaves fall
and float and lily pads like green plates serve up their white
      blooms—this tree,
so poetic, has no wish to be recycled into something that is
      only a thought
and not a living thing rooted in the earth while all its needles
      shine in the sun.

So, like the woodman in the old poem, I’ll spare that tree
      and let the sunshine
fall wordless on the still pond and the golden needles
      fallen on the earth.
I’ll walk without thinking and just look at the roots as they
      spring from the earth
and the rocks that crop up over eons like stubborn,
      monotonous thoughts.
Recycling is for cans and jars. I’ll let the woods surround
      my thoughts,
but not enter them. I’ll pocket no leaf or red mushroom to
      prompt my need
to write poems, although it’s a true proverb: “There’s nothing
      new under the sun,"

and poets have long walked in the yellow woods and felt
      how the fall sun
was warm, but not quite like summer, and seen leaves falling
      and had a thought
or two about getting old and how everything recycles. And
      if I need to root
around and find a tree for a poem, who’s to say no? The
      earth? The rocks?