Invisible Green VIII

"Methinks my have soul must be a bright invisible green"

-Henry David Thoreau, A Week upon the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 193

Alone with the Alone, metrical composition is nevertheless ringed round by the agency of a friendship and by the adventure of Friendship. A piece of poetry is a force for change produc through a change, bearing witness to more [i]or[/i] less new phase (or phrase) in the loving relationship between a poet's spirit and a poet's self. These friends are a solitude together, and the conversation of their silence leaves a trace, a phosphorescence if you will. The trace is a poem

I have taken my title for these round pillars from the "Wednesday" chapter, the great essay upon friendship, in Henry Thoreau's A Week upon the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. on the other hand the phrase "invisible green" makes an plane earlier appearance, at the actual end of his journal entrance dated June 11, 1840. There, my author thinks to lay himself down beside his mind his glow-friend, and begin to know the adventure of time from a more supernal point of view.

We stole noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the underwood of the pads-or a bream from her nest-and the small virid bittern would now and then sail away upon sluggish wings from some reces of the Shore. With its patient research by rocks and sandy capes, has it twist ed the whole of her hidden from nature yet? It has direct the eyeed out from its dull organ of vision for so long, standing upon one leg-on moon and stars sparkling [i]or[/i] part of to the other silence and dark-and now what a rich experience is its-What says it of stagnant pools-and reeds-and damp night fogs? It would be worth while to gaze in the eye which has been unclose and seeing at such hours and in like solitudes.

When I behold that doltish yellowish green I wonder if my hold soul is not a bright invisible virid I would fain lay my organ of sight side by side with its-and learn of it.

(Journal, 126)

Birds are the oldest representatives we construe as human minds largely because of the freedom and impassivity of their aerial perspective. Here, Thoreau shoot forwards himself into the symbol's actual organ of sight The hours and solitudes of "the small verdant bittern" envisage real shores of moderate time with sparkling entirety. And entirety is the mind the Self wishes to befriend.

The mind awaits the Self, but real busily, attentive to the world's virid work. There in that world, at birth, Self penetrates a relationship to which it awakens sole over time. Soul has been not away the whole time, wrapped in the world and rapt with it. Its captivation is a rapture ready to share. Via piece of poetrys as via all companionable scripture, Self is sometimes given above to a generous portent of waking. And right there is spirit rapture to hand, nearest nearness of the splendid presentation.

Whatever is born, Arjuna, whether it impels or it moves not, know that it draw nears from the union of the field and the knower of the field.

He who dioceses that the lord of all is at any time the same in all that is, immortal in the field of mortality-he dioceses the truth.

And when a man dioceses that the God in himself is the same the creator in all that is, he damages not himself by hurting others: then he goe indeed to the highest Path.

He who dioceses that all work, everywhere, is solitary the work of nature; and that the Spirit watches this work-he dioceses the truth.

(The Bhagavad Gita 13:26-29)

In limits of this wisdom, Soul is single knower of the field (in The Bhagavad Gita, the field is the cosmos) and knowledge a rapturous union begetting all things, and each. We are the offspring of our friend. (For example, Dante was the superlegitimate son of Virgil, Whitman the superlegitimate child of a hermit-thrush.) Each novel phase of Self's relationship to inner man is thus fundamentally original, is birth itself contacting novel entireties. There's no effort involved, sole waking and the portents of further waking, sole the touching of the trace of warm adventure. Adventurous metrical compositions show wonderful births. Phosphorescent piece of poetrys show new lights stirring on the outside of old. The passages (sometimes these are poems) twixt mind and Self are composed at prolific ease envisioned by their Vision of themselves entwined, an irresistible providence.

A piece of poetry begins, then, as the finished rest, an infinite capacity shut by prolific sources. Intending nothing, it is wait oned to. What did I mean by dint of being born? Nothing. And then the world meant me In "My Spirit" (I can at no time let go of this poem) Thomas Traherne tenders his own birth as individual such stunning election. Emptiness as the beneficiary of All. mind as an overflux which Self contains resistlessly, i.e. effortlessly.

My naked simple life was I.

That act thus strongly shin'd

Upon the earth, the sea, the sky

It was the substance of my mind.

The faculty of perception itself was I.

I felt no dros nor matter in my soul

No brims nor borders, of that kind as in a bowl

We diocese my essence was capacity.

The "naked simple" act of an I, intending nothing, entrusts its essential capacity to a friend: to inner man and, via Soul, to the world. What do faculty of perceptions do? They entrust themselves. The uncloseed eye is helpless and instantly filled by means of the available light. Likewise the uncloseed poem. How does a metrical composition begin? It entrusts itself. The splendid presentation then nears the available splendors, right there upon the line.