Sunday, October 22, 2006
Sunday, A Gary Snyder Kind of Sunday
A few days back my friend JHL forwarded an item that appeared in The Writers' Almanac of October 19th. It took me to a poem by Gary Snyder, one of my favorite poets in America. It was timely, fitted my mood as she thought it would.
The web site includes an audio link. Give it a try.
Map
A hill, a farm,
A forest, and a valley.
Half a hill plowed, half woods.
A forest valley and a valley field.
Sun passes over;
Two solstices a year
Cow in the pasture
Sometimes deer
A farmhouse built of wood.
A forest built on bones.
The high field, hawks
The low field, crows
Wren in the brambles
Frogs in the creek
Hot in summer
Cold in snow
The woods fade and pass.
The farm goes on.
The farm quits and fails
The woods creep down
Stocks fall you can't sell corn
Big frost and tree-mice starve
Who wins who cares?
The woods have time.
The farmer has heirs.
--Gary Snyder
Here is another that I like. Now 76, Gary Snyder lives in the Sierra foothills.
A Walk--Gary Snyder
Sunday the only day we don't work:
Mules farting around the meadow,
Murphy fishing,
The tent flaps in the warm
Early sun: I've eaten breakfast and I'll
Take a walk
To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,
Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders
Up the rock throat three miles
Puite Creek --
In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country
Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,
The clear sky. Deer tracks.
Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,
Lunch tied to belt,
I stemmed up a crack and almost fell
But rolled out safe on a ledge
and ambled on.
Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone
Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.
Craggy west end of Benson Lake -- after edging
Past dark creek pools on a long white slope --
Lookt down in the ice-black lake
lined with cliff
From far above: deep shimmering trout.
A lone duck in a gunsightpass
steep side hill
Through slide-aspen and talus, to the east end,
Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream
Into camp. At last.
By the rusty three-year-
Ago left-behind cookstove
Of the old trail crew,
Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch.
