The Trail to the Past

On Saturday mornings I read a poem from a collection by Czeslaw Milosz. This has been providing a lot of inspiration for me.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working through a long poem called "Lithuania, After Fifty-Two Years."  The poem is about his visits to various places he knew in his home country, as he works through memories and remarks on changes.  Last week he caused me to write about a place I visited many times during the years 1977-1978. When I returned in 2008, the place had so completely changed I barely recognized it.

Today's section of his poem is entitled "A Certain Neighborhood."  It took me to a different place from my past.  Here is what I wrote:

He speaks of a neighborhood he
knew well, how different all
the ponds and rivers had become,
the disappearance of the swamp.


And I thought of my beloved Metroparks,
the places there that mean so much
to me, the places shared with 
all the other Cleveland West Siders
who know the Hitchcock Tree and
the Green Barn and Cedar Point
Hill and the lagoon where I saw
my first dragonfly.

And I think of walking those
places a few years ago, how the
woods by the lagoon seemed
different than my memory, but the
lagoon the same.  How some things
had been altered, but only slightly.
Bridges instead of fords.

And that green space that opened
for me, the trees how they shimmered,
inviting me in, and I, in alive aloneness
that felt necessary and cleansing, 
entered that opening. It was there 
I found the trail that led me 
to the past.