http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/20/thoreau-awake/

What if Thoreau’s numbers below are right?

Where did he get them from?

I am going back to my old ways 

     a poem a day.

Am I so rare?

Some days

The traitorous designs 

     of humanity

become so bottle necked inside

     I scream in bitter profanity.

My cat stares at me from across the room

She is writing poetry about me

     and waiting

          for me 

     to change my tune

      to awaken.

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”  –Thoreau