the dharma blog

There’s more to the story, but I’ll make it brief for now: when Katie and I were in San Francisco we saw Gary Snyder do a reading at City Lights Bookstore. It was monumental.

We met a couple great guys in line waiting to meet Gary afterwards. Everyone was giddy and blissful. We could have got stuck by some of the weenie poetry type guys about my age with ponytails and scarves and way too much pretension. But no, we got to talk with Paul and Jim.

Paul, 50, moved to Seattle from Missouri when he was 20 years old because he read The Dharma Bums. Climbs Rainier. Drove down just to see Gary.

Here’s the poem he said was a real beauty from the book of Gary’s that Katie happened to have in her bag:

A Walk
Sunday the only day we don’t work:
Mules farting around the meadow,
       Murphy fishing,
The tent flaps in the warm
Early sun: I’ve eaten breakfast and I’ll
       Take a walk
To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,
Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders
Up the rock throat three miles
       Puite Creek –
In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country
Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,
The clear sky. Deer tracks.
Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,
Lunch tied to belt,
I stemmed up a crack and almost fell
But rolled out safe on a ledge
       and ambled on.
Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone
Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.
Craggy west end of Benson Lake — after edging
Past dark creek pools on a long white slope –
Lookt down in the ice-black lake
       lined with cliff
From far above: deep shimmering trout.
A lone duck in a gunsightpass
       steep side hill
Through slide-aspen and talus, to the east end,
Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream
Into camp. At last.
       By the rusty three-year-
Ago left-behind cookstove
Of the old trail crew,
Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch.

Gary has written many a fantastic poem, this is one of them. I’ll keep repeating it until I don’t care to anymore.

Why? What is it’s appeal? Well, it has sentimental value because it was the one Paul pointed out to us. But, the more I read it the more I find other reasons to like it.

I like it because there is the vivid action of the poet himself, my favorite example being: “I stemmed up a crack and almost fell / But rolled out safe on a ledge / and ambled on.” And I like it because of the action of the natural world: the mules farting; the tent flapping; the trout far below in their own lake world; the lone duck soaring along on its own mission.

On top of that independent action, there is the physical interaction between the poet and the world. The trout skittering as he lands by their pool; the quail chicks – so a part of the natural world they are the color of stone – running away as he comes by (and here, the suggestion of innocent humor that is necessary to fully capture such a day, “cheep!”); the poet finally wading and then swimming in the water, the ultimate act of being engulfed in the natural world.

Existing alongside all the action and interaction is the description of a perfect day. What is beautiful is that Gary saw the simple poetry of the day – the morning sun warming the camp; hopping along the mountain stream; swimming in the high alpine lake and then eating lunch in the afternoon – and that he took the time to write it down. Interacting with the natural world is simple, he tells us, it is accessible like this poem. Just look around, witness what is going on with an open mind.

The natural world is our world as much as the deer, the trout, the quail, the duck. If we simply accept the fact, we will know it to be true.