ten million years ago an ocean floor
glides like snake beneath the continent crunching up
old seabed till it’s high as alps.

I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

All those years and their moments— 
Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, 
Poems tried out on friends, 
Will be one more archive, 
One more shaky text.

Halving of the night
frogs croaking
cock crowing
morning and night together
crow cawing
bright horizon.
glimmer of day

colors of cattle can be seen.
sunrise
dew dries
cattle go out

One man draws, and releases an arrow
Humming, flat,
Misses a gray stump, and splitting
A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.

Song for Wrecked Cars

cars wrecked, washed
strewn through the desert,
trash space
ironwood limbs lit by the moon
mosquito twig breeze
cars
rusting to death
while alive

A few light flakes of snow
Fall in the feeble sun;
Birds sing in the cold,
A warbler by the wall. The plum
Buds tight and chill soon bloom.

After weeks of watching the roof leak

I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board

My wife is gone, my girl is gone,
my books are loaned, my clothes
are worn, I gave away a car; and
all that happened years ago.
Mind & matter, love & space
are frail as foam on beer.

—Gary Snyder

Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actual existing world and its wholeness.

Lovers part, from tangle warm
Of gentle bodies under quilt
And crack the icy water to the face
And wake and feed the children
And grandchildren that they love.

I am beset with the dualism of this age. It is my aim to reach a concept of unity between mankind and the natural world.

We must try to live without causing harm. We must try not to exploit others. There will be enough pain in the world as it is.

I saw a single, perfect, lovely,
manzanita
Ha.

Under the topless, bottomless,
empty blue sky
hands and knees,
looking down a little hole

leaky gate-valve drip drip

Here

In the dark
(the new moon long set)

A soft grumble in the breeze
Is the sound of a jet so high
It's already long gone by

some planet
Rising from the east shines
Through the trees

It's been years since I thought

Why are we here?

This living flowing land
is all there is, forever

We are it
it sings through us—

Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles

Place and the scale of space must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities.

Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.