Lake Bonny Clean-up

I counted 419 stones on the retaining wall around Lake Bonny and thought I was finally growing to like the place, until they mulched my favorite tree and now it hurts the butt to sit against it.

Mary Oliver: Thirst

loved one

When your life is so intertwined with that of another's, the severing is always so... nonsensical. There are traces of him everywhere: field, cafe, lake, room; and nearly everything reminds of her: sunlight, handkerchief, tea, shampoo. For the poet, the process proves even more painful as the poet's sharpened senses receive the universe naturally, intermingling it with human drama. I would call it psyche-overwhelm. Sensitive souls take everything so seriously.

Snyder: On the Run, from Fragments to Cohesion

What struck me the most about Snyder was his presence in one place, his devotion to one place. Whether it's the early rough Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, mid-career "The Bath," or recent work "Danger on Peaks," I can always feel that he's there; he's made a home in poetry, and also in nature, or perhaps the nature in poetry.

Love, Prayer: the Metaphysics of Oryx and Crake

     "Oryx," he says. "I know you're there." He repeats the name. It's not even her real name, which he'd never known anyways; it's only a word. It's a mantra.
     Sometimes he can conjure her up. At first she's pale and shadowy, but if he can say her name over and over, then maybe she'll glide into his body and be present with him in his flesh, and his hand on himself will become her hand. But she's always been evasive, you can never pin her down. Tonight she fails to materialize and he is left alone, whimpering ridiculously, jerking off all by himself in the dark. (page 110)

The Light of the World

(for my grandmother)

This morning I rose

at a strange sensation of

having been waken

by something outside of me

and yet inside of me

at the same time,

thought it was not merely time

that could contain it.

Something was green outside,

a wall of bark and shadows

that crowned a bunch of flowers

so tiny I did not know

until I was lured by something

to go barefoot, across the threshold

of my dream, and look.

Here lake water lapped against

the unmoist soil, the concrete

of my heart, which was so not like the

place on which my foot met

the edge of roots

that captured sunshine into

its dark and burgeoned

this grove which hid itself

so well inside the expanse of

a field that would remind me

of rice paddies and the fragrance

from grains, clear and transluscent in a

pool of warm broth, waiting for me

inside the house.