At the End of the Day — Image by kenne
19
— Gary Snyder
Mixed Media Collage — Computer Art by kenne
Sabino Creek Near Hutch’s Pool — Panorama by kenne
“Mushroom Table” — Computer Art by kenne
On Top
All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down
from the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
Sift down even.
Watch it sprout.
A mind like compost.
— Gary Snyder
Autumn Scene on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
December at Yase
You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”
After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.
Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I’ve always known
where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.
I didn’t.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.
Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.
We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.
I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.
And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.
-- from “Four Poems for Robin," The Back Country by Gary Snyder
Image by kenne
Water
Pressure of sun on the rockslide
whirled me in a 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 face a trout.
— Gary Snyder
“I am a poet who has preferred not to distinguish in poetry between nature and humanity.”
Desert Chicory on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
One of my favorite books of poetry is Riprap and the Cold Mountain Poems, by Gary Snyder.
The book includes Snyder’s translations of Han-shan’s Cold Mountain Poems. Han-shan was both a man and a mountain, a mountain madman in an old line of ragged hermits. He lived at a place called Cold Mountain, a poor poet having a crazy character. He wrote poems that were rough and fresh, and when he wrote about Cold Mountain, he means himself, his home, his state of mind.
— kenne
Gary Snyder reading “I settled at Cold Mountain long ago . . .”
