Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are. - Mary Oliver

LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT
(PERCY THREE)

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I'm awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

quickly found for myself two such blessings — the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place.

I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,

hovered — and easily
she adored
every blossom,

not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom — the way we praise or don’t praise — the way we love
or don’t love — but the way

we long to be — that happy
in the heaven of earth — that wild, that loving.