Into the Timeless Woods I Go

By: Erik Rittenberry

Photo: Erik Rittenberry

Woke up this morning with an agonizing
urge to be an absolute nobody
in a world gone delirious
with everybody trying
to be a “somebody.”

To be unknown and unseen
like a distant star behind
the moon, a dandelion
along the endless highway,
the night owl nested
high in the pines, unknown 
and unseen like the 
cool breeze that rustles
the ancient ferns.

To be alive, to experience
the true essence of our primitive 
soul, to cleanse myself
of the filth of civilization,
to resuscitate the inner archaic
man, to unite the conscious
with the shadow and allow
grace to devour what’s left
of my iridescent heart.

Into the timeless woods I go
where the moonlight illuminates
the infinite peace of things.

I go to the woods to dance like a 
demented shaman in the muck 
of the meadows. I go to the woods
as an antidote to modernity, to unearth 
the primordial savage within, 
to watch the birds go about their 
daily work and to saunter among 
the ancient ferns and thickets. 
I go to the woods, in the words 
of the great Thoreau,
“to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when
I came to die, discover that
I had not lived.”