by George Cassidy Payne
There is a Thoreau inside me,
a Walden in my brain that keeps me searching
for some place outside of home.
I long for myself, a journal, the pond, the horizon.
Yet when I reach it — when the water stills,
when the reeds flicker — I grow restless,
agitated, certain I do not belong.
My thoughts are commercials for reruns
I get no royalties for.
Get George Cassidy Payne’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My eyes beam satellite anxieties
onto every tree, every bird.
I want to peel them away,
but I know I am not wearing them.
I have become them.
The singularity is here and now,
and I will never be purely nature again.
I saw a video — Shawn Grows,
his garden, his butterflies.
He says the saddest thing you’ll see
is that they cannot feel happiness.
They do not have the capacity.
I wonder if Thoreau felt it.
Or was he just another man
trying to be simpler,
kinder, than he was?
Perhaps this is why we love butterflies:
they offer what we can never hold —
a life light enough not to need joy.
*Photo by the author
