Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder

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.