For me, it was a line from Carl Sandburg that did it. In my memory it was a hot, stuffy afternoon English class, high school, one of those seemingly achingly endless school days just before summer break when the hands of the clock seemed glued in place. Our teacher understood, and would allows us, when we got restless, to stand up and walk around the room while he read aloud as long as we showed some semblance of paying attention. And I did, for even back then I knew that I loved two things: language and landscape. And our teacher was reading us poetry.
I loved the magic of poetry, the way poets could seemingly weave spells with their words. And I loved landscape, particularly tangled places with some of the wild still left in them. But I hadn’t yet seen the connection between the two. That is, until that day when the voice of a caring teacher sent one line of Carl Sandburg wafting across the heat of a stuffy classroom and into my soul.
“I know now it takes many, many years to write a river/ a twist of water asking a question.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Little Dipper to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.