Northwest Archipelago, San Juan Islands — Image by kenne
Archive for the ‘Gary Snyder’ Tag
Northwest Archipelago, San Juan Islands Leave a comment
Hiking Trail Leave a comment
Hiking Trail — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain
The pine sings, but there’s no wind.
Who can leap the world’s ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?
— Gary Snyder
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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
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Monument Valley Painting 1 comment
Monument Valley Painting by kenne
“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home.”
— Gary Snyder
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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
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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
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Huntington Zen Garden Leave a comment
Huntington Zen Garden (March 31, 2022) — Panorama by kenne
I have lost count of the number of times I have visited the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, collections-based research, and educational institution in San Marino, California. The Huntington is like a “riprap” — loose rocks used as a foundation that a person can assemble before them.
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 of planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
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
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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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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
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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
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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
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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
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A Sea of Cortez Osprey Leave a comment
A Sea of Cortez Osprey — Image by kenne
Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the presence
of Pelican and Osprey and Gray Whale in our lives;
salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams.
— Gary Snyder
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Nature Is My Home Leave a comment
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”
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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
