Abundance

The Daily Walk, end of August. High summer already gone.

AFTER

Convictions, beliefs, opinions,

certainties, principles,

rules and habits have abandoned me.

I woke up naked at the edge of a civilization

which seemed to me comic and incomprehensible.

The vaulted halls of the post-Jesuit academy

where I had taken my classes 

would not have been pleased with me.

Though I preserved a few sentences in Latin.

The river flows through a forest of oak and pine.

I stand in grass up to my waist,

Breathing in the wild scent of yellow flowers.

Above, white clouds. As is usual in my district,

an abundance of white clouds.

By the river Wilia, 1999.

Czeslaw Milosz

from New and Collected Poems (1931-2001) 

Ecco. 2001, 2001, page 744

Try to follow the strategy of this poem with information from your own life; when you complete a sentence or a thought, start a new stanza.