Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist and teacher, is 89 today. I wrote about him in the previous post here. In celebration of his birthday, I'm posting the poem that comes last in his 1991 collection, No Nature: New and Selected Poems. It's become one of my favorites.
RIPPLES ON THE SURFACE
"Ripples on the surface of the water--
were silver salmon passing under--different
from the ripples caused by breezes"
A scudding plume on the wave--
a humpback whale is
breaking out in air up
gulping herring
---Nature not a book, but a performance, a
high old culture
Ever-fresh events
scraped out, rubbed out, and used, used, again--
the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass---
The vast wild
the house, alone.
The little house in the wild,
the wild in the house.
Both forgotten.
No nature
Both together, one big empty house.
Howdy Doodle
-
It was four summers ago—nearly five—that Margaret drove the six hours or so
to the Bay Area, to an animal shelter that specialized in small dogs,
espe...
1 week ago
No comments:
Post a Comment