January 2025

Winter is an acquired taste, one which no one ever has savored more than Henry David Thoreau. As another winter settles in and a new, uncertain year approaches, I’ve been turning to Thoreau’s journals for reassurance that beauty still can be found even within the darkest of days.

In a departure from the usual Poem of the Month offering, this month’s featured poem is a “Found” one from HDT’s journal entry of December 3, 1856. The words and images are all Thoreau’s own; only the ordering of the lines and stanzas is mine.

The Winter Wood-lot: A Found Poem

Henry David Thoreau, journal entry 12/03/1856

For years I fed

On the pine forest’s edge

Seen against the 

Winter horizon.

I ranged like 

A gray moose

Looking at the spiring

Tops of the trees

And fed my imagination

On them, far-away, ideal

Trees not disturbed by the axe

Nearer and nearer

Fringes and eyelashes

Of my eye.  

Where was

The sap, the fruit,

The value of the forest

For me, but in that line

Where it was relieved

Against the sky?

That was my wood-lot;

That was my lot in the woods.

The silvery needles of 

The pine straining the light.

Henry David Thoreau, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817 and died there in 1862. In between, he observed and reflected on nature as no one had before nor has anyone since.

Thanks to the dedication and generosity of The Walden Woods Project https://www.walden.org/collection/journals/ , Thoreau’s journals are available to all who wish to plumb their wisdom.