Walden by Haiku

Brute Neighbors

[54] Brute Neighbors keeping house keeping bright the devil’s doorknobs water from the spring a loaf of brown bread on the shelf those clouds how they hang nothing like it in paintings meditation shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? whistle for my thoughts they have left no track [55] red ants and black ants their Battle of Concord fighting for principle the woods ring the hunter’s wild discharge the loon’s wild laughter the surprise of fishes a loon amid their schools eighty feet deep the loon looning a long-drawn unearthly howl the woods ring far and wide the stillness of the air the smoothness of the water the loon’s long howl [56] Thoreau asks, “Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?” (225). What is Walden but a collection of objects beheld— and wondered at? What is the nature of this world? The smoothness of water, the call of a loon, the dive of a loon below the surface, ants in a battle, clouds, a loaf of bread—Walden is full of wonder at such things and full of delight in what Blyth called “materiality.” It is consistent with the spirit of haiku to behold, as Emerson puts it, “the miraculous in the common” (“Nature” 44). And in gathering these objects for our shared perusal and wonderment, Thoreau also displays the traits of grateful acceptance and love, two more of the Zen qualities Blyth sees as key elements of haiku. Grateful acceptance of and love for all the objects of the world, even when they’re not pretty—even amid predation, violence , loss, yearning—even when they seem, at first, nothing particularly remarkable. You hear Thoreau called cranky and curmudgeonly, critical , complaining, and dour, but ultimately Walden is a very loving and attentive book. These objects that make up a world—Thoreau reminds us, instance after instance, that they are remarkable. ...