Walking

Freda sent me this poem this morning.  

I've walked twice (a piece with Luci, then later to meet Freda for the Real Walk) since reading it.  The air feels clean and the temperature now reaching toward 70--a perfect day, except it's not.  What happens in Ukraine affects us all.  So many Americans cheering for Putin is shattering.  

We walk to run into artists and music and trees--and to watch dogs who don't know much about anything wagging along happily, as if life is normal. 

Go For a Brisk Walk 
by Gene Guntzel

Go for a brisk walk every day
Either around dawn or sunset
And you may run into Chopin or Monet,
Charlotte Bronte or a mysterious brunette
Who turns out to be Maria Callas.
Bessie Smith, Jack Benny, you never knew,
The Duke of Earl slipping away from the palace,
Kafka and his fiancée strolling in the snow.
Melville whose book you meant to read,
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Princess Diana, Van Gogh,
Out walking, despite all they’ve been through.
“To comprehend a nectar requires sorest need,”
Said Emily Dickinson. (She’s here, too.)
Life is hard. Oh Lord, the miseries we bear
And yet it’s good to get out in the open air.