I do not know the poet Thomas A. Clark of Pittenweem, Scotland. But if I met him, I think I’d like him. People with shared sensibilities find it easy to get along.
He’s a walker and thinks walkers’ thoughts. His poem “In Praise of Walking” is a series of 40 items: propositions, aphorisms, adages, and a rhetorical question.
The answer to the question that ends the poem is: No, there’s nothing better than to be outside.
I like Clark and his poems because I can respond to his interests in a way that I can’t to those of other poets. I love to walk in natural places. I get the sense he does too.
I once was chastised by a fan of Samuel Johnson’s who thought I failed to appreciate the great man’s gifts as an observer of nature. That might be true, but even when Johnson was enjoying the wilds of Scotland, he seemed to be a man who wanted to get back to London. Or so it seemed to me.
Clark does not seem that way. Here are items No. 3 and 4 of his poem:
That something exists outside ourselves and our preoccupations, so near, so readily available, is our greatest blessing.
Walking is the human way of getting about.
And this congregation of one replies: Amen.
• Source: Thomas A. Clark’s site is here:
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