Looking Back To Spring of 2011   Leave a comment

Originally posted April 2011 on Becoming is Superior to Being. — kenne

“The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which
the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head,
not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.” — George Berkeley

Artist Along Sabino Creek In Sabino Canyon, April, 2011 — Image by kenne

Water

Pressure of sun on the rockslide
Whirled me in dizzy hop-and-step descent,
Pool of pebbles buzzed in a Juniper shadow,
Tiny tongue of a this-year rattlesnake flicked,
I leaped, laughing for little boulder-color coil–
Pounded by heat raced down the slabs to the creek
Deep tumbling under arching walls and stuck
Whole head and shoulders in the water:
Stretched full on cobble–ears roaring
Eyes open aching from the cold and faced a trout.

 — Gary Snyder in Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

The poem originally appeared Riprap, which was Snyder’s first book of poetry. For Snyder, nature as divine, which goes hand-in-hand with the biocentric nature of his Buddhist beliefs.

— kenne

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