not will, not desire:
perhaps prayer
not still:
held
at the end you said:
I want to keep my eyes open,
to miss nothing
not entreaty, not regret
not future, not past:
touch and warm weight
breath and again:
what word can be heard
not loss, not absence:
perhaps soul
not inside, not outside:
dusk’s doorway
not alone
from All We Saw: Poems
It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
– Walden
