Theodore Roethke

What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.

And soon a branch, part of a hidden scene,
The leafy mind, that long was tightly furled,
Will turn its private substance into green,
And young shoots spread upon our inner world.

I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance..

They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls...

Snail, snail, glister me forward,
Bird, soft-sigh me home,
Worm, be with me.
This is my hard time.

Voice, come out of the silence.
Say something

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse...

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.