I agree with Angelle. After reading those poems -especially The Tables Turned- I was hit with a sudden urge to abandon my worldly obligations and run around in the woods, or splash in s stream, or frolic in the fields like they do in The Sound of Music. Actually, being an avid tree hugger, I get that urge a lot and don't get to act on it often enough. In fact, I don't think people in general act on it enough and that this is the cause of many of society's problems. Many people feel like something's wrong if they aren't doing something productive every waking hour, or if they do take a moment to do nothing, they feel guilty about it. I certainly do. We need someone, some authority telling us it's ok to drop the books, take off your wristwatch and go be "one with nature." Maybe, if we believed this to be ok, if we could not feel so guilty about not being productive 24/7, we wouldn't have so many people paying to talk to therapists once a week. Maybe people wouldn't be so stressed all the time. Maybe marriages would be saved, relationships salvaged, and children loved. Maybe...
It's comforting to know that some of the people viewed as having accomplished so much have, in their way, simply done nothing and been ok with it. I mean, Martin Luther King and Gandhi- how much more revolutionary can you get? And -here's my tree-hugger side coming out again- perhaps if we spent more time experiencing nature, rather than sitting in the isolated bubble we call society, where we write about and analyze and worry about nature, we would appreciate and value her all the more. I read something once about people in Sweden, or some such majestic place in Europe, having a greater appreciation for and value of their nation's national resources and landscapes because they spend so much more time outside than we do. Maybe there's something to that. We in America drive our cars around worrying about off-shore drilling and global warming thinking of what we can constructively do about such dilemmas, when maybe we should simply take a walk in the woods ( a pastime requiring no use of fossil fuels or emission of greenhouse gases) and do nothing. I might just help the situation.