(This was one of my favorite poems when I was in my twenties and spending a lot of time backpacking in the Sierra. It still makes me smile. I remain a true Turtle Island patriot.)
Love this one sentence! "Money isn’t real and it doesn’t belong to anyone anyway. It’s just an agreed on nightmare that we’ve all decided to allow ourselves to be shackled to and it sucks. We’re tired little ants scrambling around to avoid the murderous beams of concentrated light from the magnifying glasses held by the tiny billionaire (and more) class."
You rock. Please know you offer meaning to many lives who aren’t able to donate !!!!
Much love for your short, close to the bone, notice of those small yet huge instances of traveling through life that bring us together in beauty and truth.
Gary Snyder's best work (IMO) was his earliest, in "The Back Country," when he was most under the influence of Japanese and Chinese poets but in a Sierra earthworld. My all-time favorite poem of his:
Chris, thank you for the recommendation to read I Love You So Many! I have been mostly offline this summer and am out of the loop on recent releases. I am bummed I cannot join your conversation this weekend, but Terria's book is now ordered and will be next on my tbr!
A great amount of gratitude swells my heart, knowing you for many years now, supporting your newsletter, reading you within each writing.
For All
by Gary Snyder
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
(This was one of my favorite poems when I was in my twenties and spending a lot of time backpacking in the Sierra. It still makes me smile. I remain a true Turtle Island patriot.)
Love this one sentence! "Money isn’t real and it doesn’t belong to anyone anyway. It’s just an agreed on nightmare that we’ve all decided to allow ourselves to be shackled to and it sucks. We’re tired little ants scrambling around to avoid the murderous beams of concentrated light from the magnifying glasses held by the tiny billionaire (and more) class."
You rock. Please know you offer meaning to many lives who aren’t able to donate !!!!
Much love for your short, close to the bone, notice of those small yet huge instances of traveling through life that bring us together in beauty and truth.
Gary Snyder's best work (IMO) was his earliest, in "The Back Country," when he was most under the influence of Japanese and Chinese poets but in a Sierra earthworld. My all-time favorite poem of his:
BURNING THE SMALL DEAD
Burning the small dead
branches
broke from beneath
thick spreading
whitebark pine.
a hundred summers
snowmelt rock and air
hiss in a twisted bough.
sierra granite;
Mt. Ritter—
black rock twice as old.
Deneb, Altair
windy fire
Chris, thank you for the recommendation to read I Love You So Many! I have been mostly offline this summer and am out of the loop on recent releases. I am bummed I cannot join your conversation this weekend, but Terria's book is now ordered and will be next on my tbr!