This poem was developed from pictures taken at Walden Pond on January 30,1996, and assembled as a chapbook for "An Afternoon of Nature Poetry at Walden Pond," September 27, 1997.
The Circle of Light
How was I to know you would be there,
at the beginning of the path,
a circle of light I must pass through?
I had asked for a witness, something
to develop in the pictures I was taking,
not normally there, but there always. . .
Was it vain- laying out a fleece,
or was the venture so great, the odds
so impossible it required a sign?
There are times when what God asks
is outrageous: "From thirty thousand
take three hundred to fight a multitude."
Custom, religion, fear, hope, faith
fall away, and you are left
bartering as with a merchant-
When it rains let the fleece be dry.
When it's dry let the fleece be wet.
