From a Poet

February 3rd, 2013 For the first time in some months I am confident in my path and linger not upon doubt.  Those creatures of thought heard in the solitudes of the forest no longer need a name, but are somehow understood, and should I put my finger upon the sounds of distant words, they become recognizable purely because of utterance.  Giving life and finding sureness in the dark, is a compassion unlooked for, but so very well at home, that we almost too swiftly set out again before we have enjoyed the full comforts of that most intimate moment. Douglas Thornton

January 26th, 2013 We must constantly be set in some direction lest our preoccupations fall within a mode of importance that bind us to an obligation which does not serve our purpose or present state of mind.  Yet this is hard to define at any given moment, and though we are contemplative, our thinking mostly consists in reflections on variously changing subjects.  If we could let ourselves be pulled into the center and perfect intention of our art, the reconciliation of life as we see it in reality, and the wisdom for which we aim, would not be so difficult.  But as it is, the effort is divided and we must learn to let go. Douglas Thornton

November 15th, 2012 Hiked on the 10th; mushroom hunting and the first cepe de Bordeaux I've ever found.  Those places where the mushroom lives and sprouts up excite me; for they are on the most unnoticeable part of ground and give importance to a spot that we would have briefly looked over in any other circumstance.  It is perhaps a meditation on nature; the robin, the squirrel, and even the deer are apt to cross our path, and still other birds, or the tracks of unknown animals, and though the mushroom still sits in the back of our mind, we anticipate an encounter with something far less known, and going into the underbrush, or pushing aside dead leaves, enlightens a conscious courage that is almost as ancient as it is foreign to our daily lives.  He certainly who finds what he's looking for has always been searching for something else. Douglas Thornton

November 7th, 2012 The sky is overcast and somehow the more beautiful for it.  The resurgence of something, at one time held in the light, gains the absolute clearest perspective when it can be approached on cloudy days.  It is not that we see anything new, rather it is the coming into contradiction of our own perception.  In that way, what was held of interest once before, now finds conflict with how we must approach it.  This is true for the way we read books, listen to music, and try to figure out the tasks of our day, and this is also true of any solution.   The lake is deeper with the loss of light, the forest more silent; animals step with an approaching calm, and it is all too easy to forget that we must function with the rising of the sun.  The trees have gone from light yellow to dark red in the matter of a week and it is with renewed interest that I take up the terrifying banalities of life. Douglas Thornton

October 29th, 2012 The 27th was the first day of autumn--a faint chill and pelting rain; the trees taking on different colours, the ferns rusting away.  One day we wake up and it is spring, another winter; for we call the first of things pure: the first taste, the first scent; but the first expression of autumn, the first realization that our earth is moving further away from the sun, in that thought alone there is the greatest solitude. Daily life has a great warming effect to it--it is wonderful to be caught up in our habits and see from within the season changing.  Haste, anxiety, and dread, all take on new meanings, those of which we can recede into and find relief in the fact that our own storms and our own frailties are matters less eternal than the wind.  It is even soothing to rediscover a pressing need and find that the importance given to it was but an illusion caused by the summer months or the full moon--in reality, we don't know.  The way we feel a certain l