Hello all,

Your bartender tonight is Björm, blogging from Sweden.

Today we are having an open night linkup, and as every month we also invite you for a live event on Saturday at 10 AM New York Time. You are free to join even if you don’t want to read and just listen.

Here is the link to the event: https://meet.google.com/kis-bmzs-ifc

At the open link, you are free to link up any one poem of your liking, read and comment as any other possibility.

I will take a little break from poetry writing and soon start a long walk on skis. We plan to be away from most digital activities for about two months. Personally I came down with a cold but expect to be fully recovered when we start on Saturday February 21. The early part of February has been very cold with nightly temperatures going below -25 degrees C (below -13 F), but we hope it will be warmer when we start.

This bring me back to one of my favorite old sayings which sounds so much better in latin:

Solvitur ambulando

Which in English is often translated into “It is solved by walking”. The simple action of using your feet (maybe with attached skis) is something that has a long tradition in philosophy, religion and poetry. I wonder how many of you have found your muse when walking, hiking, as a shadow in the trees, or even in the simple phase of planning a hike.

Consider for instance this poem by Rilke:

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far beyond the road I have begun,
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has an inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave…
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

I like the fact that it describes the change in ourselves, and maybe even more if we don’t reach the goal for the walk.

If you find it better you may go ekphrastic and maybe remember that the best walk may not be in the best of weathers, maybe this artwork by Vincent van Gogh might inspire.

No matter how you join, it is simple, just write a poem, post it to your blog and provide a link-back to dVerse. Link it to Mr Linky below and then read and comment, get inspired and have fun here at our virtual pub. Remember to visit and read the poems from other participants and leave a comment below if you want to.