After Leaf Raking

Raking leaves today I thought of Thoreau

naturally, some might say, why not?

But not Ralph Waldo Emerson, close 

friend and mentor, who in his essay

reduced “the whole of nature” to a metaphor.

Why was I neither inspired nor moved

to pick up Walden one more time,

despite my visit to Concord, Mass,

a few years back, where I watched 

“bright golden” pickerel in the shallows?

What I was living for today was leaves

like those that littered Walden Pond,

where Thoreau often fished for time.

In American lit Professor Randall said

Thoreau never raked a leaf in his life.