Authors: Gary Snyder
Danger on Peaks (3 page)
E
NJOY THE
D
AY
One morning on a ridgetop east of Loowit
after campstove coffee
looking at the youthful old volcano
breathing steam and sulfur
sunrise lava
bowls of snow
went up behind a mountain hemlock
asked my old advisors where they lay
what's going on?
they say
“New friends and dear sweet old tree ghosts
here we are again. Enjoy the day.”
II
Yet Older Matters
B
RIEF
Y
EARS
Hanging Out by Putah
Creek with Younger Poets
Sitting on the dusty
dry-leaf crackly ground,
freeway rumble south,
black walnut shade,
crosslegged, hot,
exchanging little poems
Yet Older Matters
A rain of black rocks     out of space
onto deep blue ice     in Antarctica
nine thousand feet high       scattered for miles.
Crunched inside yet older matter
from times before our very sun
(from a conversation with Eldridge Moores & Kim Stanley Robinson)
Flowers in the Night Sky
I thought, forest fires burning to the north!
yellow nomex jacket thrown in the cab, hard-hat, boots,
I gunned the truck up the dirt-road scrambling,
and came out on a flat stretch with a view:
shimmering blue-green streamers and a red glow down the sky â
Stop. Storms on the sun. Solar winds going by
(The night of the red aurora borealis: seen as far south as northern California, April 2001)
A Dent in a Bucket
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
a woodpecker
answers from the woods
Baby Jackrabbit
Baby jackrabbit on the ground
thick furry brindled coat
little black tailtip
back of the neck ate out,
life for an owl.
Work Day
They want â
Short lengths of 1” schedule 40
PVC
A 10' chimney sweeping brush
someone to grind the mower blades
a log chain,
my neighbors' Spring work.
Chainsaw dust
clay-clod stuck spade
apple blossoms and bees
Asian Pear
The slender tender Asian pear
unpruned, skinny, by the zendo
never watered, ragged,
still puts out fruit
fence broken,
trunk scored with curls of bark,
bent-off branches, high-up scratches â
pears for a bear
Cool Clay
In a swarm of yellowjackets
a squirrel drinks water
feet in the cool clay, head way down
Give Up
Walking back from the Dharma-Talk
summer dry madrone
leaves rattle down
“Give up! give up!
Oh sure!” they say
How
small birds      flit
from bough
to bough to bough
to bough to bough to bough
Whack
Green pinecone flakes
pulled, gnawed clean around,
wobbling, slowly falling
scattering on the ground,
whack the roof.
Tree-top squirrel feasts
â twitchy pine boughs.
Yowl
Out of the underbrush
a bobcat bursts chasing a housecat.
Crash â yowl â silence.
Pine pollen settles again.
April Calls and Colors
Green steel waste bins
flapping black plastic lids
gobbling flattened cardboard,
far off, a backup beeper
Standup Comics
A parking meter that won't take coins
a giant sprinkler valve wheel chained and locked
a red and white fire hydrant
a young dandelion at the edge of the pavement
Sky, Sand
Cottonwoods streambank
splashing fording up the creekbed
black phoebe calling
pi pi pi
here, near â
Mexican blackhawk cruising â squint at the sky,
shoes full of sand
(Aravaipa Canyon, Arizona)
Mimulus on the Road to Town
Out of cracks in the roadcut rockwalls,
clumps of peach-colored mimulus
spread and bloom,
stiffly quiver in the hot
log-truck breeze-blast
always going by â
they never die.
A Tercel is a Young Male Hawk
Falconers used to believe that the third hawk egg in a clutch would be a male. So they call a young male hawk a “tercel” from
tertius,
“third.” Who knows why carmakers name their cars the way they do.
Taking the gas cap off
stick it in my work vest pocket
I see a silver Tercel parked
by a hedge and a waste bin full of bottles
â filling my old Toyota pickup.
Brighter Yellow
An “Ozark Trucking” bigrig pulls up
by me on the freeway, such a vivid yellow!
a brighter yellow than bulldozers.
This morning James Lee Jobe was talking
of the wild blue bonnets
and the dark red Indian paintbrush down in Texas.
Said, “from a distance â them growing all together
makes a field of solid purple.”
Hey â keep on the right side
of that yellow line
To the Liking of Salmon
Spawning salmon dark and jerky
just below the surface ripple
shallow lower Yuba
River bed â old mining gravels
mimicking a glacier outflow
perfect for the redds below Parks Bar.
(how hydraulic mining made the Yuba Goldfields like a post-glacial river in Alaska)
G
LACIER
G
HOSTS
Late July: Five Lakes Basin & Sand Ridge, Northern Sierra
A lake east of the east end of Sand Ridge, a sleeping site tucked under massive leaning glacial erratic propped on bedrock, bed of wood bits, bark, and cones.
Gravelly bed below a tilted erratic,
chilly restless night,
â ants in my hair
Nap on a granite slab
half in shade, you can never hear enough
sound of         wind in the pines
Piko feared heights
went up the steep ridge on all fours.
But she went
Catching grasshoppers for bait
attaching them live to the hook
â I get used to it
a certain poet, needling
Allen Ginsberg by the campfire
“How come they all love
you
?”
Clumsy at first
my legs, feet, and eye      learn again to leap,
skip through the jumbled rocks
Starting a glissade
down a steep snowfield
they say, “Gary, don't!”
but I know my iceaxe
Diving in the perched lake, coming up
can see right over the outlet waterfall
distant peaks               Sierra Buttes
Tired, quit climbing at a small pond
made camp, slept on a slab
til the moon rose
ice-scrape-ponds, scraggly pines,
long views, flower mud marshes,
so many places
for a wandering boulder to settle,
forever.
A gift of rattlesnake
meat â packed in â
cooked on smoky coals
how did it taste?
Warm nights,
the lee of twisty pines â
high jets crossing the stars
Things spread out
rolling and unrolling, packing and unpacking,
â this painful impermanent world.