League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on June 9, 2010

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

The Oxbow River, Tupper Lake NY (photo by the author)

I saw this William Butler Yates poem referenced on the Facebook wall of my friend John Darnielle. It instantly evoked for me the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. During the years our daughters were growing up, the Adirondacks was our family trysting place. We were living in a very stressful situation in those years, and our annual pilgrimages to the High Peaks and forests of the Adirondacks were both survival mechanisms and at the same time sources of deep joy.

Do you have a place that from time-to-time beckons to you from “the roadway, or the pavements gray”?

—-

Poem source