David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Poetry in Motion

                                                                                                                                                                                                

Could taking a walk transform a person into a poet? Probably not. But it may be worth a try. Perhaps there’s a connection between the rhythm of footsteps  and the cadence of verse. Poets tend to be walkers. Writers as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mary Oliver, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walt Whitman have found their muse while afoot. William Wordsworth is said to have logged 175,000 walking miles in his lifetime, and Henry David Thoreau would spend three or four afternoon hours afield during his most productive writing decades.

Barred Owl (poem)

Vigilant, Sphinx-like, perched
high among spruce branches,
solemn searchlight brown eyes
pierce viscous darkness for barely
visible frogs, crayfish, voles and snakes.

Hoohoo-hoohoo, hoohoo-hooohooooaw
haunts the night air, draws me deep
into shadowy woods. “Who cooks for you,
who cooks for you-all” sounds mysterious,
profound. Who’s in my kitchen, I wonder.

Hard wired instinct of muscle and feathers,
owls are sovereign over sage mnemonics.
We’ve conflated concentration
with intuition, visual acuity with wisdom,
wondering why we aren’t any wiser.

Photo courtesy of Wendy Rosenberg

On the Connecticut Jail Trail

Prison Afterlife
Electric lights hardly alleviate the gloom in this cavern of rugged and irregular rock that once served as a prison. Sixty or so feet underground with water dripping from the ceiling, darkness seems to absorb any illumination. I’m standing in a dead end passage where inmates were once chained to the floor. There’s still a rusting eye bolt embedded in the rock. When I speak to my companion there’s not only an echo, but a deep, eerie vibration that hums in the walls for a few moments. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the moist, cool, 52 degree underground temperature. Despite the presence of tourists in sneakers pointing cameras and the exclamations of children, Old New-Gate Prison in East Granby is creepy.

With their heavy masonry walls, barred windows and unusual interior layouts, prisons and jails are not easily adaptable once their life as penal institutions are over. Macabre stories of mayhem, death and heinous behavior leave these buildings with a psychological pall. As a result, innumerable such structures have been demolished and their memory confined to images and stories. Those that survive remain indelible curiosities. They invite new uses that range from restaurants to museums, retail to housing.