"Out Walking" by John Leax

 

I’ve read Nightwatch, the young adult novel by John Leax (1943-2924), and I’ve read his collection of short essays on writing, Grace is Where I Live and Remembering Jesus: Sonnets and Songs, one of his poetry collections. And now I’ve figuratively walked with him through the woods and fields, called Remnant Acres, near where he lived in upstate New York.

Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World is a collection of essays first published as columns in the Wellsville (NY) Daily Reporter. It is also a collection of poems on the same natural theme, because Leax found that nature spoke of God and faith and sometimes that discovery could only be expressed in poetry.

The subjects of each essay and poem are simple – a dead squirrel, a heron, stones, salamanders, the kitchen garden (and protecting it against the birds and critters), fishing, watching the moon, and more. Yet in simplicity one often finds clarity and truth, and Leax finds it in abundance. What he finds moves him to praise and prayer.

A prayer for order

Father of all creatures,

whose dwelling extends beyond this world,

let no one trivialize your being.

Let your order prevail.

Let your intentions come to be

for creation and for yourself.

Give us, each day, no more than we need,

and forgive us when we take for ourselves

the well being of others,

as we forgive others who seek to take ours.

Lead us away from our dreams of power

that we might be whole,

satisfied in you.

John Leax

It’s not my imagination that in this poem I find echoes of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament.

From 1968 to 2009, John Leax (1943-2024) was an English professor and poet-in-residence at Houghton College in New York. He was a poet, an essayist, and the author of one novel, Nightwatch. Leax’s poetry collections include “Reaching into Silence,” “The Task of Adam,” “Sonnets and Songs,” and “Country Labors.” His non-fiction writing and essay collections include “Grace Is Where I Live,” “In Season and Out,” “Standing Ground: A Personal Story of Faith and Environmentalism,” “120 Significant Things Men Should Know…but Never Ask About,” and “Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World.”

Out Walking is a quiet, thoughtful, faithful work, a guide to what the natural order can and should mean. It may be a slim volume (140 pages), but it is packed with insight and truth.

Related:

Grace Is Where I Live by John Leax.

Nightwatch by John Leax.

Some Monday Readings

Darker – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

Bone Into Stone: On translating Ovid’s Metamorphosis – Jhumpa Lahiri at The Dial.

Not So Close: Two different looks at Henry David Thoreau – Ashley Barnes at Commonweal.

The Importance of Walking a Battlefield – Doug Crenshaw at Emerging Civil War.

The Inflection Point – Michael Oren at Clarity.