View Off Wilderness Rocks Trail in the Santa Catalina Mountains (08/08/14) — Image by kenne
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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
Wilderness of Rocks Trail In The Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
Piute Creek
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 — Image by kenne
— Gary Snyder
Pusch Ridge Wilderness, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Han-shan
Time To Rest The Feet (FotoFest 10/24/02) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— from Praise for Sick Women by Gary Snyder
Snow In the Santa Catalina Mountains — Images by kenne
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— Gary Snyder from the Cold Mountain Poems
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Honey Bee On Elegant Lupin — Image by kenne
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— Gary Snyder
23 — from Gary Snyder’s Cold Mountain Poems
Sabino Canyon, Santa Catalina Mountains — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Gary Snyder
Snow On Mountain — Image by kenne
— Gary Snyder
The 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
Anna’s Hummingbird — Image by kenne
It started just now with a hummingbird
Hovering over the porch two yards away then gone,
It stopped me studying.
I saw the redwood post
Leaning in clod ground
Tangled in a bush of yellow flowers
Higher than my head, through which we push
Every time we came inside —
The shadow network of the sunshine
Through its vines. White-crowned sparrows
Made tremendous singings in the trees
The rooster down the valley crows and crows.
Jack Kerouac outside, behind my back
Reads the Diamond Sutra in the sun.
— from Migration of Birds by Gary Snyder
Field Crescent Butterfly — Image by kenne
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Sabino Canyon Horse Corral — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— Gary Snyder
Snow On The Santa Catalina Mountains On December 26th — Images by kenne
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— from Han Shan’s Cold Mountain Poems, translation by Gary Snyder
Becoming is Superior to Being 