Archive for the ‘Gary Snyder’ Category

Among The Top 15 In The Houston Area   Leave a comment

The Houston Chronicle recognized outstanding nurses during a luncheon on May 2, 2023. Each year, the Houston Chronicle
honors the top nurses across Greater Houston during their Salute to Nurses event. In 2023, 200 recipients were selected through a public nomination — included are seven UT Physicians employees. Kenne was recognized as one of the Top 15 this year.

Riprap
 
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
             placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
             in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
             riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
             straying planets,
These poems, people,
             lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
             and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
             four-dimensional
Game of Go.
             ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
             a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
             with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
             all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
 
— Gary Snyder
 
 

Monument Valley Painting   1 comment

Monument Valley Painting by kenne

“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.”

— Gary Snyder

Cold Mountain   Leave a comment

Snow On The Mountain — Image by kenne

6

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn’t melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart’s not the same as ypurs.
If your heart was like mine
You’d get it and be right here.

— from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder

Facepainting   Leave a comment

Facepainting (The Woodlands Art Festival, April 2008) — Image by kenne

              All women are wounded
Who gather  berries, dibble in mottled light,
Turn white roots from humus, crack nuts on stone
High upland with squinted eye
              or rest in cedar shade.

— from Praise for Sick Women by Gary Snyder

View Off Wilderness Rocks Trail   Leave a comment

View Off Wilderness Rocks Trail in the Santa Catalina Mountains (08/08/14) — Image by kenne

2

In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place –
Bird paths, but no trails for me.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I’ve lived here – how many years –
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

Han-shan, Cold Mountain Poems Translated by Gary Snyder

Granite Ridge   Leave a comment

Wilderness of Rocks Trail In The Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne

Piute Creek

BY GARY SNYDER
 
One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted   
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.   
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks   
Warm.   Sky over endless mountains.   
All the junk that goes with being human   
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail   
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge   
Gone in the dry air.
 
. . . continue reading

 

Weep For The Crowds   1 comment

Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly On A Bearded Penstemon — Image by kenne

   Thinking about a poem I’ll never write.
With gut on wood and hide, and plucking thumb,
Grope and stutter for the words, invent a tune,
In any tongue, this moment one time true
Be wine or blood of rhythm drives it through—
A leap of words to things and there it stops.
Creating empty caves and tools in shops
And holy domes, and nothing you can name;
The long old chorus blowing underfoot
Makes high wild notes of mountains in the sea.
O Muse, a goddess gone astray
Who warms the cow and makes the wise man sane,
(& even madness gobbles demons down)
Then dance through jewelled trees & lotus crowns
For Narihira’s lover, the crying plover,
For babies grown and childhood homes
And moving, moving, on through scenes and towns
Weep for the crowds of men
Like birds gone south forever.

— from A Stone Garden by Gary Snyder

Cloud Ripples At Sunset   Leave a comment

Cloud Ripples At Sunset — Image by kenne

“Nature is orderly.
That which appears to be chaotic in nature
is only a more complex kind of order.”

— Gary Snyder

The Path To Han-shan’s Place   2 comments

Pusch Ridge Wilderness, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne

The path to Han-shan’s place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges – hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs – unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I’ve lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

— Han-shan

 

Time To Rest The Feet   1 comment

Joy at FotoFestTime To Rest The Feet (FotoFest 10/24/02) — Photo-Artistry by kenne

The female is fertile, and discipline

(contra naturam) only confuses her

Who has, head held sideways

Arm out softly, touching,

A difficult dance to do, but not in mind.

 

Hand on sleeve: she holds leaf turning

In sunlight on spiderweb;

Makes him flick like trout through shallows

Builds into ducks and cold marshes

Sucks out the quiet: bone rushes in

Behind the cool pupil a knot grows

Sudden roots sod him and solid him

Rain falls from skull-roof mouth is awash with small creeks

Hair grows, tongue tenses out – and she

Quick turn of the head: back glancing, one hand

Fingers smoothing the thigh, and he sees.

 

— from Praise for Sick Women by Gary Snyder

 

 

 

Snow In The Mountains   Leave a comment

Snow From The Canyon, White Bird

December Snow_20111214_0875-72Snow In the Santa Catalina Mountains — Images by kenne

14

Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,

People who climb here are always getting scared.

When the moon shines, water sparkles clear

When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.

On the bare plum, flowers of snow

On the dead stump, leaves of mist.

At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live

At the wrong season you can’t ford the creeks.

— Gary Snyder from the Cold Mountain Poems

 

14

Honey Bee On Elegant Lupin   Leave a comment

Bee On Lipon-DSC_4407-72Honey Bee On Elegant Lupin — Image by kenne

23

My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.

Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loose, and it flows through the galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind—
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.

— Gary Snyder

23 — from Gary Snyder’s Cold Mountain Poems

Sabino Canyon — Photo-Artistry   1 comment

SCVN Nature Walk -- 12-14-11Sabino Canyon, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”

— Gary Snyder

Snow On Mt. Lemmon   1 comment

Mt. Lemmon Snow 2012 87-72-2Snow On Mountain — Image by kenne

In the mountain’s it’s cold

Always been cold, not just this year.

Jagged scarps forever snowed in

Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.

Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,

Leaves begin to fall in early August.

And here am I, high on mountains,

Peering and peering, but I can’t even see the sky.

— Gary Snyder

The Path To His Mountain Place   1 comment

Green Mountain Trail 9-art-72-II.jpgThe Path to His Mountain Place — Photo-Artistry by kenne

The path to Han-shan’s place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges — hard to trace the twists
Jumbled cliffs — unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I’ve lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

— Gary Snyder

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