“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualities are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good silence,
and nothing too much.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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A late-in-life walker, the words above resonate in my mind,
with a check, check, check, check and a voluble ding, reading

and nothing too much”

many a poem mine labored, birthed arrhythmically walking,
eyes see verses, verses fill the mouth, mind desperate as
the feet unceasingly trod round new corners, new visions,
Emerson’s words remind my well worn weary path daily renewed, a vocabulary child re-newborn, and how to keep all this forever,
until tomorrow, and nothing is everything all too much carried over

and nothing too much”

speaks to an openness in every orifice, be prepared scout-boy,
to adapt to nothing too much as hours earlier now recalled are ancient history, mind staggers at the minuscule differences tween yesterday and this exact moment in this exact place that has been reimagined, deserving of recording, notating, and my desperation struggle to
semi-successfully delineate, report, on all these
mini-magnificent miracles countenanced, overwhelms…

the brain furnaces/furnishes a thousand thoughts, a million worries,
slew of infinity-sized emotions like love of children, so it’s confusing to window-peeking  strangers watching for the walking man with tears pockmarking his cheeks, unaware that his each stride is a story, a unique grace forward and too, backwards, history mine, reviewed, graded, and the comfortable shoes, the old sagging clothes well worn and beloved, fit like gloves, whispering in the good silence,
a lamb sacrifice to the

good silence,
“human, your foibles and deeds, admixture of
blood inherited, a morality crafted by ancestors,
so the next step is
alway$

and nothing too much”* and everything…

Sat Dec10 2023
Shell Beach, Central Park, in my mind, and nothing is perfect