Pete Walsh

Category: Poetry and Prose

  • Love in the place that you found it

    “I phoned Leonard [Cohen] on the day that my mother – who in many ways was my ‘significant other’ – died. ‘Was that somehow strange, devoting one’s life to one’s mother?’ I asked. His response was impeccable: ‘Jenny, never question where love comes from. We have no control over these things. From a stranger, a mother, a dog, or that perfect mate, it comes from wherever it comes. You were lucky, in fact – everyone hopes to find love in the place that you found it.’”

    Jennifer Warne
  • The last rose…

    The last rose…

    So soon may I follow,
    When friendships decay,
    And from Love’s shining circle
    The gems drop away.

    Thomas Moore, from the last rose of summer.

  • Nothing Gold Can Stay

    Nature’s first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leaf’s a flower;
    But only so an hour.
    Then leaf subsides to leaf.
    So Eden sank to grief,
    So dawn goes down to day.
    Nothing gold can stay.

    – Robert Frost

  • Waldeinsamkeit

    I do not count the hours I spend
    In wandering by the sea;
    The forest is my loyal friend,
    Like God it useth me.

    In plains that room for shadows make
    Of skirting hills to lie,
    Bound in by streams which give and take
    Their colors from the sky;

    Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
    Or down the oaken glade,
    O what have I to do with time?
    For this the day was made.

    Cities of mortals woe-begone
    Fantastic care derides,
    But in the serious landscape lone
    Stern benefit abides.

    Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy,
    And merry is only a mask of sad,
    But, sober on a fund of joy,
    The woods at heart are glad.

    There the great Planter plants
    Of fruitful worlds the grain,
    And with a million spells enchants
    The souls that walk in pain.

    Still on the seeds of all he made
    The rose of beauty burns;
    Through times that wear and forms that fade,
    Immortal youth returns.

    The black ducks mounting from the lake,
    The pigeon in the pines,
    The bittern’s boom, a desert make
    Which no false art refines.

    Down in yon watery nook,
    Where bearded mists divide,
    The gray old gods whom Chaos knew,
    The sires of Nature, hide.

    Aloft, in secret veins of air,
    Blows the sweet breath of song,
    O, few to scale those uplands dare,
    Though they to all belong!

    See thou bring not to field or stone
    The fancies found in books;
    Leave authors’ eyes, and fetch your own,
    To brave the landscape’s looks.

    Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
    Thy thrift, the sleep of cares;
    For a proud idleness like this
    Crowns all thy mean affairs.

    – Ralph Waldo Emerson