Woke up this morning with an
agonizing urge
to be an absolute nobody
in a world gone mad
with everybody trying
to be a “somebody.”

To be unknown and unseen
like a distant star in an
undiscovered galaxy, a dandelion
loafing beneath the sun
in some deserted pasture,
to be an anonymous
breeze that rustles the
ferns of an ancient
forest at the edge
of the world.

Ah, yes…

To be far away, adrift and alone,
sauntering in a leafy alcove,
“where Nature moves, and
Rapture warms the Mind.”

To get out there beyond the
perimeter
of this barbed wire civilization,
far removed from worldly
titles and deadlines and the
delusional drudgery and
pandemonium of endless
ambition.

To be barbarically alive, to savor
the pure lifeblood of our primitive
marrow, to cleanse myself
of the filth of steel-and-asphalt
reality, to resuscitate the inner
archaic spirit, to unite the conscious
with the shadow and allow
grace to devour what’s left
of my iridescent heart.

Into the timeless woods I go
where the moonlight illuminates
the infinite peace of things.

I go to the woods to dance barefoot
like a demented shaman in the muck
of the meadows. I go to the woods
as an antidote to modernity,
to wander at ease among
the wild geraniums and thickets,
unearthing the primordial
savage within.

I go to the woods, in the words
of Thoreau, “to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when
I came to die, discover that
I had not lived.”