Such admirable iambic pentameter, strict yet muted. "Long" in "remember long" is odd. It was only a month back the brook was running. Is that a forced rhyme? Or a tongue-in-cheek poke at willful nostalgia, similar to "the road less traveled" which was not?
I used to walk in the woods a lot, often with my son. Even though I'd read "Hyla Brook" as a boy, I was at first surprised by the intermittent creeks. There was one we crossed on most of our walks. It was sometimes dry, sometimes a trickle, sometimes full enough that I appreciated the large flat stone someone had placed midway between banks. We crossed it just above its confluence with a little river. Two or three times we walked off trail up the creek, discovering that the shallow hollow it flowed down brought us to a small pond in the woods filled with leaves and fallen branches. Every encounter with the creek reminded us of all the others.
And we love the things for what they are, for how else could we love them?
Such admirable iambic pentameter, strict yet muted. "Long" in "remember long" is odd. It was only a month back the brook was running. Is that a forced rhyme? Or a tongue-in-cheek poke at willful nostalgia, similar to "the road less traveled" which was not?
I used to walk in the woods a lot, often with my son. Even though I'd read "Hyla Brook" as a boy, I was at first surprised by the intermittent creeks. There was one we crossed on most of our walks. It was sometimes dry, sometimes a trickle, sometimes full enough that I appreciated the large flat stone someone had placed midway between banks. We crossed it just above its confluence with a little river. Two or three times we walked off trail up the creek, discovering that the shallow hollow it flowed down brought us to a small pond in the woods filled with leaves and fallen branches. Every encounter with the creek reminded us of all the others.