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.