SNYD »J

Turtle Island
PU
for POETRY 1375
Turtle Island
OTHER BOOKS BY GARY SNYDER
The Back Country
Earth House Hold

Myths and Texts

Regarding Wave

Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

Six Sections from Mountains

and Rivers without End

TURTLE ISLAND
Gary Snyder
••

8
A New Directions Book
Copyright © 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 by Gary Snyder
Woodcut illustrations, Copyright © 1974 by Michael Corr

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper,

magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be re-
produced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, in-
cluding photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors and publishers of var-
ious publications in which some of the material in this book first ap-
peared: Aldebaran, Caterpillar, City Lights Journal, Clear Creek, Cop-
per Canyon, Crazy Horse, Fiction International, The Hudson Review,
Hyperion, Jeopardy, Kayak, Kuksu, Look, Marijuana Review, New Ameri-
can Review, New Directions in Prose and Poetry, The New York Times,
Not Man Apart, North Country, Organ, Peace & Pieces, Raster, Rising
Generation, Rogue River Gorge, Unmuzzled Ox, World.

The section "Manzanita" was originally brought out in a limited edition

by the Four Seasons Foundation (Bolinas, California) in 1972. "The
Hudsonian Curlew" first appeared in Poetry.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published clothbound and as New Directions Paperbook 381 in
1974
Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Snyder, Gary.
Turtle Island.

(A New Directions Book)

Poems.
L Title.
PS3569.N88T8 8ii'.5'4 74-8542
ISBN 0-8112-0545-2
ISBN 0-8112-0546-0 (pbk.)

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
333 Sixth Avenue, New York 10014

FIFTH PRINTING
 6 1

CONTENTS

MANZANITA
Anasazi 3

The Way West, Underground 4

Without 6
The Dead by the Side of the Road
I Went into the Maverick Bar 9
Steak 10
No Matter, Never Mind 1

The Bath 12
Coyote Valley Spring 15
Spel Against Demons 1

Front Lines 18
Control Burn 19
The Great Mother 20
The Call of the Wild 21
Prayer for the Great Family 24
Source 26
Manzanita 27
Charms 28
MAGPIE'S SONG

Facts 3

The Real Work 32

Pine Tree Tops 33
For Nothing 34
Night Herons 35
The Egg 37
The Uses of Light 39
On San Gabriel Ridges 40
By Frazier Creek Falls 41
Black Mesa Mine #1 42
Up Branches of Duck River 43
It Pleases 44
Hemp 45
The Wild Mushroom 46
Mother Earth: Her Whales 47
Affluence 50
Ethnobotany 5
Straight Creek-Great Burn 52
The Hudsonian Curlew 54
Two Fawns That Didn't See the Light
This Spring 58
Two Immortals 59
Rain in Alleghany 60 I
Avocado 61
What Steps 62
Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier
Than Students of Zen 63
Bedrock 64
The Dazzle 65
"One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter about
What is Forbidden by the Buddha" 66
LMFBR 67
Walking Home from "The Duchess of Malfi" 68
Magpie's Song 69

FOR THE CHILDREN

O Waters 73
Gen 74
Dusty Braces 75
The Jemez Pueblo Ring 76
Tomorrow's Song 77
What Happened Here Before 78
Toward Climax 82
For the Children 86
As for Poets 87

PLAIN TALK

Four Changes 91
 1

"Energy is Eternal Delight" 103

The Wilderness 106
What's Meant by "Here" 1 1

On "As for Poets" 113

FOR LOIS SNYDER HENNESSY
MY MOTHER
INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Turtle Island— the old/new name for the continent, based

on many creation myths of the people who have been living
here for millenia, and reapplied by some of them to "North
America" in recent years. Also, an idea found world-wide, of
the earth, or cosmos even, sustained by a great turtle or serpent-
of-eternity.
A name: that we may more accurately on this
see ourselves
continent of watersheds and life-communities— plant zones,
physiographic provinces, culture areas; following natural
boundaries. The "U.S.A." and its and counties are ar-
states
bitrary and inaccurate impositions on what is really here.
The poems speak of place, and the energy-pathways that sus-
tain life. Each living being is a swirl in the flow, a formal tur-
bulence, a "song." The land, the planet itself, is also a living
being— at another pace. Anglos, Black people, Chicanos, and
others beached up on these shores all share such views at the
deepest levels of their old cultural traditions— African, Asian,
or European. Hark again to those roots, to see our ancient
solidarity, and then to the work of being together on Turtle
Island.
I
MANZANITA
ANASAZI

Anasazi,
Anasazi,

tucked up in clefts in the cliffs

growing strict fields of corn and beans

sinking deeper and deeper in earth
up to your hips in Gods
your head all turned to eagle-down
& lightning for knees and elbows
your eyes full of pollen

the smell of bats.

the flavor of sandstone
grit on the tongue.

women
birthing
at the foot of ladders in the dark.

trickling streams inhidden canyons

under the cold rolling desert

corn-basket wide-eyed
red baby
rock lip home,

Anasazi
THE WAY WEST, UNDERGROUND

The split-cedar
smoked salmon
cloudy days of Oregon,
the thick fir forests.

Black Bear heads uphill in

Plumas county,
round bottom scuttling through willows—

The Bear Wife moves up the coast.

where blackberry brambles

ramble in the burns.

And around the curve of islands

foggy volcanoes
on, to North Japan. The bears
& fish-spears of the Ainu.
Gilyak.
Mushroom-vision healer,
single flat drum,
from long before China.

Women with drums who fly over Tibet.

Following forests west, and

rolling, following grassland,

tracking bears and mushrooms,

eating berries all the way.
In Finland finally took a bath:
like redwood sweatlodge on the Klamath-
all the Finns in moccasins and
pointy hats with dots of white.
netting, trapping, bathing,
singing holding hands, the while

see-sawing on a bench, a look of love—

Karhu— Bjorn— Braun— Bear

[lightning rainbow great cloud tree

dialogs of birds]
Europa. 'The West.'
the bears are gone
except Brunhilde?

or elder wilder goddesses reborn— will race

the streets of France and Spain
with automatic guns—
in Spain,
Bears and Bison,
Red Hands with missing fingers.
Red mushroom labyrinths;
lightning-bolt mazes.
Painted in caves.

Underground.
WITHOUT

the silence

of nature

within.

the power within,

the power

without.

the path is whatever passes— no

end in itself.

the end is,

grace— ease-

healing,

not saving.

singing

the proof

the proof of the power within.

6
THE DEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

How did a great Red-tailed Hawk

come to lie— all stiff and dry-
on the shoulder of
Interstate 5?

Her wings for dance fans

Zac skinned a skunk with a crushed head

washed the pelt in gas; it hangs,
tanned, in his tent

Fawn stew on Hallowe'en

hit by a truck on highway forty-nine
offer cornmeal by the mouth;
skin it out.

Log trucks run on fossil fuel

I never saw a Ringtail til I found one in the road;

case-skinned it with the toenails
footpads, nose, and whiskers on;
it soaks in salt and water
sulphuric acid pickle;

she will be a pouch for magic tools.

The Doe was apparently shot

lengthwise and through the side-
shoulder and out the flank
belly full of blood
Can save the other shoulder maybe,
if she didn't lie too long-
Pray to their spirits. Ask them to bless us:
our ancient sisters' trails

the roads were laid across and kill them:

night-shining eyes

The dead by the side of the road.

I WENT INTO THE MAVERICK BAR

Iwent into the Maverick Bar

In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I'd left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay

by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
"We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskokie"
And with the next song,
a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances

in the fifties;
I recalled when
worked in the woods
I

and the bars of Madras, Oregon.

That short-haired joy and roughness-
America— your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.

We left— onto the freeway shoulders—

under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
"What is to be done."
STEAK

Up on the bluff, the steak houses

called "The Embers'-called
"Fireside"
with a smiling disney cow on the sign
or a stockman's pride— huge
full-colorphoto of standing Hereford stud
above the very booth
his bloody sliced muscle is
served in;
"rare"

The Chamber of Commerce eats there,

the visiting lecturer,
stockmen in Denver suits,
Japanese-American animal nutrition experts
from Kansas,
with Buddhist beads;

And down by the tracks

in frozen mud, in the feed lots,
fed surplus grain
(the ripped-off land)
the beeves are standing round-
bred heavy.
Steaming, stamping,
long-lashed, slowly thinking
with the rhythm of their
breathing,
frosty— breezy-
early morning prairie sky.

10
NO MATTER, NEVER MIND

The Father is the Void

The Wife Waves

Their child is Matter.

Matter makes it with his mother

And their child is Life,
a daughter.

The Daughter is the Great Mother

Who, with her father/brother Matter
as her lover,

Gives birth to the Mind.

11
THE BATH

Washing Kai in the sauna,

The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach

"Gary don't soap my hair!"

—his eye-sting fear—
the soapy hand feeling
through and around the globes and curves of his body
up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,
up and getting hard
his penis curving
back skin and try to wash it
as I pull
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
I squat all naked too,

is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone

cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing
kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
sierra forest ridges night—
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air

sweep down from the door

a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
her hair falling hiding one whole side of
shoulder, breast, and belly.
Washes deftly Kai's head-hair
as he gets mad and yells—
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine.

12
 the space between the thighs I reach through,
cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind,
a soapy tickle a hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of
wombs in wombs, in rings,
that start in music,
is this our body?

The hidden place of seed

The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers
milk and peaks up in a nipple— fits
our mouth—
The sucking milk from this our body sends through
jolts of light; the son, the father,

sharing mother's joy

That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome
open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss
As Kai laughs at his mother's breast he now is weaned
from, we
wash each other,
this our body

Kai's little scrotum up close to his groin,

the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him
In flows that lifted with the same joys forces
as his nursing Masa later,

playing with her breast.

Or me within her.
Or him emerging,
this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch

out on the redwood benches hearts all beating
Quiet to the simmer of the stove,
the scent of cedar
And then turn over.

13
 murmuring gossip of the grasses,
talking firewood,
Wondering how Gen's napping, how to bring him in
soon wash him too—
These boys who love their mother
who loves men, who passes on
her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines,

the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

this is our body.

Fire inside and boiling water on the stove

We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches
wrap the babies, step outside,

black night & all the stars.

Pour cold water on the back and thighs

Go in the house— stand steaming by the center fire

Kai scampers on the sheepskin

Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

"Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!"

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames

drinking icy water
hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth

Come out from the bath.

14
COYOTE VALLEY SPRING

Cubs
tumble in the damp leaves
Deer, bear, squirrel,
fresh winds scour the
spring stars,
rocks crumble
deep mud hardens
under heavy hills.

shifting things
birds, weeds,
slip through the air
through eyes and ears.

Coyote valley. Olema

in the spring.
white and solemn toloache flower

and far out in the tamal

a lost people
float

in tiny tule boats.

15
SPEL AGAINST DEMONS

The release of Demonic Energies in the name of

the People
must cease

Messing with blood sacrifice in the name of

Nature
must cease

The stifling self-indulgence in anger in the name of

Freedom
must cease

this is death to clarity

death to compassion

the man who has the soul of the wolf

knows the self-restraint
of the wolf

aimless executions and slaughterings

are not the work of wolves and eagles

but the work of hysterical sheep

The Demonic must be devoured!

Self-serving must be
cut down
Anger must be
plowed back
Fearlessness, humor, detachment, is power

Gnowledge is the secret of Transformation!

16
Down with demonic killers who mouth revolutionary
slogans and muddy the flow of change, may they be
Bound by the Noose, and Instructed by the Diamond
Sword of ACHALA the Immovable, Lord of Wisdom, Lord
of Heat, who is squint-eyed and whose face is terrible
with bare fangs, who wears on his crown a garland of
severed heads, clad in a tiger skin, he who turns
Wrath to Purified Accomplishment,

whose powers are of lava,

of magma, of deep rock strata, of gunpowder,
and the Sun.

He who saves tortured intelligent demons and filth-eating

hungry ghosts, his spel is,

NAMAH SAMANTAH VAJRANAM CHANDA

MAHAROSHANA
SPHATAYA HUM TRAKA HAM MAM

17
FRONT LINES

The edge of the cancer

Swells against the hill— we feel
a foul breeze—
And it sinks back down.
The deer winter here
A chainsaw growls in the gorge.

Ten wet days and the log trucks stop,

The trees breathe.
Sunday the 4-wheel jeep of the
Realty Company brings in
Landseekers, lookers, they say
To the land.
Spread your legs.

The crack sound overhead, it's

jets OK here;
Every pulse of the rot at the heart
In the sick fat veins of Amerika
Pushes the edge up closer—

A bulldozer grinding and slobbering

Sideslipping and belching on top of
The skinned-up bodies of still-live bushes
In the pay of a man
From town.

Behind is a forest that goes to the Arctic

And a desert that still belongs to the Piute
And here we must draw
Our line.

18
CONTROL BURN

What the Indians

here
used to do, was,
to burn out the brush every year.
in the woods, up the gorges,
keeping the oak and the pine stands
tall and clear
with grasses
and kitkitdizze under them,
never enough fuel there
that a fire could crown.

Now, manzanita,
(a fine bush in its right)
crowds up under the new trees
mixed up with logging slash
and a fire can wipe out all.

Fire is an old story.

I would like,

with a sense of helpful order,

with respect for laws
of nature,
to help my land
with a burn, a hot clean
burn.
(manzanita seeds will only open
after a fire passes over
or once passed through a bear)

And then
it would be more
like,

when it belonged to the Indians

Before.

19
THE GREAT MOTHER

Not all those who pass

In front of the Great Mother's chair

Get passt with only a stare.

Some she looks at their hands

To see what sort of savages they were.

20
THE CALL OF THE WILD

The heavy old man in his bed at night

Hears the Coyote singing
in the back meadow.
All the years he ranched and mined and logged.
A Catholic.
A native Californian.
and the Coyotes howl in his
Eightieth year.
He will call the Government
Trapper
Who uses iron leg-traps on Coyotes,
Tomorrow.
My sons will lose this
Music they have just started
To love.

The ex acid-heads from the cities

Converted to Guru or Swami,
Do penance with shiny
Dopey eyes, and quit eating meat.
In the forests of North America,
The land of Coyote and Eagle,
They dream of India, of
forever blissful sexless highs.
And sleep in oil-heated
Geodesic domes, that
Were stuck like warts
In the woods.

21
And the Coyote singing
is shut away
for they fear
the call
of the wild.

And they sold their virgin cedar trees,

the tallest trees in miles,
To a logger
Who told them,

"Trees are full of bugs."

The Government finally decided

To wage the war all-out. Defeat
is Un-American.
And they took to the air.

Their women beside them

in bouffant hairdos
putting nail-polish on the
gunship cannon-buttons.
And they never came down,
for they found,
the ground
is pro-Communist. And dirty.
And the insects side with the Viet Cong.

So they bomb and they bomb

Day after day, across the planet
blinding sparrows
breaking the ear-drums of owls
splintering trunks of cherries
twining and looping
deer intestines
in the shaken, dusty, rocks.

22
All these Americans up in special cities in the sky
Dumping poisons and explosives
Across Asia first,

And next North America,

A war against earth.

When it's done there'll be

no place

A Coyote could hide.

envoy

I would like to say

Coyote is forever
Inside you.

But it's not true.

23
PRAYER FOR THE GREAT FAMILY

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day-

and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf

and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind

and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent

Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,

freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
self-complete, brave, and aware
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;

holding or releasing; streaming through all

our bodies salty seas

in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through

trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep— he who wakes us—
in our minds so be it.

24
Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars— and goes yet beyond that—
beyond all powers, and thoughts
and yet is within us—
Grandfather Space.
The Mind is his Wife.

so be it.

after a Mohawk prayer

25
SOURCE

To be in
to the land
where croppt-out rock
can hardly see
the swiftly passing trees

Manzanita clans
cluster up and fan out on their soils
in streaks and sweeps
with birds and woodrats underneath

And clay swale keeps wet,

free of trees, the bunch-grass
like no Spaniard ever came

I hear no news

Cloud finger dragons dance and

tremble down the ridge
and spit and spiralsnow then pull in
quivering, on the sawtooth
spine

Clears up, and all the stars,

the tree leaves catch
some extra tiny source
all the wide night

Up here
out back
drink deep
that black light.

26
MANZANITA

Before dawn the coyotes

weave medicine songs
dream nets— spirit baskets-
milky way music
they cook young girls with
be woman;
to
or the whirling dance of
striped boys—

At moon-set the pines are gold-purple

Just before sunrise.

The dog hastens into the undergrowth

Comes back panting
Huge, on the small dry flowers.

A woodpecker
Drums and echoes
Across the still meadow

One man draws, and releases an arrow

Humming, flat,
Missing a gray stump, and splitting
A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.

Manzanita the tips in fruit,

Clusters of hard green berries
The longer you look
The bigger they seem,

"little apples"

27
CHARMS
for Michael McClure

The beauty naked or half-naked women,

of
lying in nothing clear or obvious— not
in exposure; but a curve of the back or arm,
as a dance or— evoking "another world"

"The Deva Realm" or better, the Delight

at the heart of creation.

Brought out for each mammal species

specifically— in some dreamlike perfection
of name-and-form

Thus I could be devastated and athirst with longing

for a lovely mare or lioness, or lady mouse,
in seeing the beauty from THERE
shining through her, some toss of the whiskers
or grace-full wave of the tail

that enchants.

enchants, and thus

CHARMS.

28
MAGPIE'S SONG
FACTS

1. 92% of Japan's three million ton import of soybeans comes

from the U.S.

2. The U.S. has 6% of the world's population; consumes 1/3

the energy annually consumed in the world.

3. The U.S. consumes 1/3 of the world's annual meat.

4. The top 1/5 of American population gets 45% of salary

income, and owns about 77% of the total wealth. The top
1% owns 20 to 30% of personal wealth.

5.A modern nation needs 13 basic industrial raw materials.

By AD 2000 the U.S. will be import-dependent on all but
phosphorus.

6. General Motors is bigger than Holland.

7. Nuclear energy is mainly subsidized with fossil fuels and

barely yields net energy.

8. The "Seven Sisters"— Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, Standard

of California, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell.

9. "The reason solar energy has not and will not be a major
contributor or substitute for fossil fuels is that it will not com-
pete without energy subsidy from fossil fuel economy. The
plants have already maximized the use of sunlight."— H. T.
Odum

10. Our primary source of food is the sun.

31
THE REAL WORK
[Today with Zach & Dan rowing by Alcatraz and around Angel
Island]

sea-lions and birds,

sun through fog
flapsup and lolling,
looks you dead in the eye.
sun haze;
a long tanker riding light and high.

sharp wave choppy line-

interface tide-flows—
seagulls sit on the meeting
eating;
we slide by white-stained cliffs.

the real work,

washing and sighing,
sliding by.

32
PINE TREE TOPS

in the blue night

frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

33
FOR NOTHING

Earth a flower
A phlox on the steep
slopes of light
hanging over the vast
solid spaces
small rotten crystals;
salts.

Earth a flower
by a gulf where a raven
flaps by once
a glimmer, a color
forgotten as all

falls away.

A flower
for nothing;
an offer;
no taker;

Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.

34
NIGHT HERONS

Night herons nest in the cypress

by the San Francisco
stationary boilers
with the high smoke stack
at the edge of the waters:
a steam turbine pump
to drive salt water
into the city's veins
mains
if the earth ever
quakes, and the power fails.

and water
to fight fire, runs
loose on the streets
with no pressure.

At the wire gate tilted slightly out

the part-wolf dog
would go in, to follow
ifhis human buddy lay on his side
and squirmed up first.

An abandoned, decaying, army.

a rotten rusty island prison
surrounded by lights of whirling
fluttering god-like birds
who truth
has never forgot.

I walk with my wife's sister

past the frozen bait;
with a long-bearded architect,
my dear brother,
and silent friend, whose

35
mustache curves wetly into his mouth
and he sometimes bites it.

the dog knows no laws and is strictly,

illegal. His neck arches and ears prick out

to catch mice in the tundra.

a black high school boy
drinking coffee at a fake green stand
tries to be friends with the dog,
and it works.

How could the

night herons ever come back?
to this noisy place on the bay.
like me.
the joy of all the beings
is in being
older and tougher and eaten
up.
in the tubes and lanes of things
in the sewers of bliss and judgment,
in the glorious cleansing
treatment
plants.

We pick our way

through the edge of the city
early
subtly spreading changing sky;

ever-fresh and lovely dawn.

36
THE EGG
'A snake-like beauty in the living changes of syntax"
—Robert Duncan

Kai twists
rubs "bellybutton"
rubs skin, front and back
two legs kicking
anus a sensitive center
the pull-together
between there and the scrotum,
the center line,
with the out-flyers changing
—fins, legs, wings,
feathers or fur,
they swing and swim
but the snake center
fire pushes through:
mouth to ass,
root to
burning, steady,
single eye.

breeze in the brown grasses

high clouds deep
blue. white,
blue. moving
changing

my Mother's old
soft arm. walking
helping up the
path.

Kai's hand
in my fist

37
the neck bones,
a little thread,
a garland,
of consonants and vowels
from the third eye
through the body's flowers
a string of peaks,
a whirlpool
sucking to the root.

It all gathers,
humming,
in the egg.

38
THE USES OF LIGHT

It warms my bones
say the stones

I take it into me and grow

Say the trees
Leaves above
Roots below

A vast vague white

Draws me out of the night
Says the moth in his flight-

Some things I smell

Some things I hear
And I see things move
Says the deer—

A high tower
on a wide plain.
If you climb up

One floor
You'll see a thousand miles more.

m
39
ON SAN GABRIEL RIDGES

I dream of—
soft, white, washable country
clothes.
woven zones.
scats
up here on the rocks;
seeds, stickers, twigs, bits of grass
on my belly, pressed designs—

loves of long ago

hello again,
all of us together
with all our other loves and children
twining and knotting
through each other-
intricate, chaotic, done.
1 dive with you all

and it curls back, freezes;

the laws of waves.
as clear as a canyon wall
as sweet,
as long ago.

woven
into the dark.
squirrel hairs,
squirrel bones crunched,
tight and dry in scats of
fox.

40
BY FRAZIER CREEK FALLS

Standing up on lifted, folded rock

looking out and down—

The creek falls to a far valley.

hills beyond that
facing, half-forested, dry
—clear sky
strong wind in the
stiff glittering needle clusters
of the pine— their brown
round trunk bodies
straight, still;

rustling trembhng limbs and twigs

listen.

This living flowing land

is all there is, forever

We are it

it sings through us—

We could live on this Earth

without clothes or tools!

41
BLACK MESA MINE #1

Wind dust yellow cloud swirls

northeast across the fifty-foot
graded bulldozed road,
white cloud puffs,
juniper and pinyon scattered groves
—firewood for the People
heaps of wood for all
at cross-streets in the pueblos,
ancient mother mountain
pools of water
pools of coal
pools of sand
buried or laid bare

Solitary trucks go slow on grades

smoking sand
writhes around the tires
and on a torn up stony plain
a giant green-and-yellow shovel
whirs and drags
house-size scoops of rock and gravel

Mountain,
be kind,
it will tumble in its hole

Five hundred yards back up the road

a Navajo corral
of stood up dried out poles and logs
all leaned in on an angle,
gleaming in the windy April sun.

42
UP BRANCHES OF DUCK RIVER

Shaka valley— chickens thousands

murmur in sheet walls
past plaster house of welder-sculptor
shakuhachi pond,
dead grass golf-course bulldozed on the hill
pine Dragon Benten
ridgetop— far off Kyoto on the flat,
turn in to deeper hills toward himuru, "Ice House"-
cut-back Sugi— logger shelter-

Low pass, a snow patch still up here,

they once stored ice for summer,
old women stoking bath fire

white plum bloom

Old man burning brush, a wood sheath for the saw

Over the edge & down to Kamo River

white hills— Mt. Hiei, Hira— cut clean
reseed patchwork, orchard fir

Muddy slipping trail

wobbly twin pole bridges
gully throat
forks in
somebody clearing brush & growing tea
& out, turn here for home
along the Kamo River.

hold it close
give it all away.

43
IT PLEASES

Far above the dome

Of the capitol—
It's true!

A large bird soars

Against white cloud,
Wings arced,
Sailing easy in this
humid Southern sun-blurred
breeze—
the dark-suited policeman
watches tourist cars—

And the center.

The center of power is nothing!
Nothing here.
Old white stone domes.
Strangely quiet people,

Earth-sky-bird patterns
idly interlacing

The world does what it pleases.

Washington D.C. XI:73

44
HEMP
for Michael Aldritch

Gravel-bars, riverbanks, scars

of the glaciers,
healing and nursing moraine-
tall hemp plants followed man

midden dump heap roadway slash

To bind his loads and ease his mind

Moor to Spain, Spain in horse-manure
and straw, across the sea
& up from Mexico

—a tiny puff of white cloud far away,

we and wait, for days,
sit

and pray for rain.

45
THE WILD MUSHROOM

Well the sunset rays are shining

Me and Kai have got our tools
A basket and a trowel
And a book with all the rules

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube-mouths they are red
Stay away from the Amanitas
Or brother you are dead

Sometimes they're already rotten

Or the stalks are broken off
Where the deer have knocked them over
While turning up the duff

We set out in the forest

To seek the wild mushroom
In shapes diverse and colorful
Shining through the woodland gloom

If you look out under oak trees

Or around an old pine stump
You'll know a mushroom's coming
By the way the leaves are humped

They send out multiple fibers

Through the roots and sod
Some make you mighty sick they say
Or bring you close to God

So here's to the mushroom family

A far-flung friendly clan
For food, for fun, for poison
They are a help to man.

46
MOTHER EARTH: HER WHALES

An owl winks in the shadows

A Hzard hfts on tiptoe, breathing hard
Young male sparrow stretches up his neck,
big head, watching—

The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green.

Turn it sweet. That we may eat.
Grow our meat.

Brazil says "sovereign use of Natural Resources"

Thirty thousand kinds of unknown plants.
The living actual people of the jungle
sold and tortured—
And a robot in a suit who peddles a delusion called "Brazil"
can speak for them?

The whales turn and glisten, plunge

and sound and rise again.
Hanging over subtly darkening deeps
Flowing like breathing planets
in the sparkling whorls of
living light—

And Japan quibbles for words on

what kinds of whales they can kill?

A once-great Buddhist nation

dribbles methyl mercury
like gonorrhea
in the sea.

Pere David's Deer, the Elaphure,

Lived in the tule marshes of the Yellow River
Two thousand years ago— and lost its home to rice—
The Lo-yang were logged and all the silt &
forests of
Sand flowed down, and gone, by 1200 AD—
47
Wild Geese hatched out in Siberia
head south over basins of the Yang, the Huang,
what we call "China"
On flyways they Jiave used a million years.
Ah China, where are the tigers, the wild boars,
the monkeys,
like the snows of yesteryear
Gone in a mist, a flash, and the dry hard ground
Is parking space for fifty thousand trucks.

IS man most precious of all things?

—then let us love him, and his brothers, all those
Fading living beings-

North America, Turtle Island, taken by invaders

who wage war around the world.
May ants, may abalone, otters, wolves and elk
Rise! and pull away their giving
from the robot nations.

Solidarity. The People.

Standing Tree People!
Flying Bird People!
Swimming Sea People!
Four-legged, two-legged, people!

How can the head-heavy power-hungry politic scientist

Government two- world Capitalist-Imperialist
Third-world Communist paper-shufiiing male
non-farmer jet-set bureaucrats
Speak for the green of the leaf? Speak for the soil?

(Ah Margaret Mead ... do you sometimes dream of Samoa?)

The robots argue how to parcel out our Mother Earth

To last a little longer
like vultures flapping
Belching, gurgling,
near a dying Doe.

48
"In yonder field a slain knight lies—
We'll fly to him and eat his eyes
with a down
derry derry derry down down."

An Owl winks in the shadow

A lizard lifts on tiptoe
breathing hard
The whales turn and glisten
plunge and
Sound, and rise again
Flowing like breathing planets

In the sparkling whorls

Of living light.

Stockholm: Summer Solstice 40072

49
AFFLUENCE

under damp layers of pine needle

still-hard limbs and twigs
tangled as they lay,
two sixteen foot good butt logs took
all the rest, top, left

and from logging twenty years ago

this
(figured from core-ring reading on a tree
still stands, hard by a stump)

they didn't pile the slash and burn then-

fire hazard, every summer day.

it was the logger's cost

at lumber's going rate then

now burn the tangles dowsing

pokey heaps with diesel oil.
paying the price somebody didn't pay.

50
ETHNOBOTANY

In June two oak fell,

rot in the roots

Chainsaw in September
in three days one tree
bucked and quartered in the shed

sour fresh inner oak-wood smell

the main trunk splits

"like opening a book" (J. Tecklin)

And slightly humping oak leaves

deer muzzle and kick it,

Boletus.
one sort, Alice Eastwood
pink, and poison;

Two yellow, edulus

"edible and choice."
only I got just so slightly sick-

Taste all, and hand the knowledge down.

51
STRAIGHT-CREEK-GREAT BURN
for Tom and Martha Burch

Lightly, in the April mountains-

Straight Creek,
dry grass freed again of snow
& the chickadees are pecking
last fall's seeds
fluffing tail in chilly wind,

Avalanche piled up cross the creek

and chunked-froze solid-
water sluicing under; spills out
rock lip pool, bends over,
braided, white, foaming,
returns to trembling
deep-dark hole.

Creek boulders show the flow-wear lines

in shapes the same
as running blood
carves in the heart's main
valve,

Early spring dry. Dry snow flurries;

walk on crusty high snow slopes

—grand dead burn pine-
chartreuse lichen as adornment
(a dye for wool)
angled tumbled talus rock
of geosyncline warm sea bottom
yes, so long ago.
"Once on a time."

52
Far light on the Bitteroots;
scrabble down willow slide
changing clouds above,
shapes on glowing sun-ball
writhing, choosing
reaching out against eternal
azure-

US resting on dry fern and

watching

Shining Heaven
change his feather garments
overhead.

A whoosh of birds
swoops up and round
tilts back

almost always flying all apart

and yet hangs on!
together;

never a leader,
all of one swift

empty
dancing mind.

They arc and loop & then

their flight is done,
they settle down,
end of poem.

53
THE HUDSONIAN CURLEW
for Drum and Diana

The end of a desert track— turnaround-

parked the truck and walked over dunes,
a cobbly point hooks in the shallow bay;

the Mandala of Birds.

pelican, seagulls, and terns,

one curlew
far at the end—
they fly up as they see us
and settle back down,
tern keep coming
—skies of wide seas-
frigate birds keep swooping

pelicans sit nearest the foam;

tern bathing and fluttering

in frothy wave-lapping
between the round stones.

we
gather driftwood for firewood
for camping
get four shells to serve up steamed snail

4-

in the top of thecardon cactus

two vultures
look, yawn, hunch, preen,
out on the point the seabirds
squabble and settle, meet and leave;
speak.

54
 two sides of a border.
the margins. tidewater. zones.
up in the void, under the surface,
two worlds touch
and greet

4-

Three shotgun shots as it gets dark;

two birds.
"how come three shots?"
"one went down on the water
and started to swim.
I didn't want another thing like that duck.

the bill and the long neck limp—

curved in,

a grandmother plumage of cinnamon and brown.

the beak not so long— bars on the head;
by the eye.
Hudsonian Curlew

and those tern most likely

"Royal Tern"
with forked tail,

that heavy orange bill.

The down
ipluck from the
neck of the curlew
eddies and whirls at my knees
in the twilight wind
from sea.
kneeling in sand

warm in the hand.

55
"Do you want to do it right? I'll tell you/'
he me.
tells

at the edge of the water on the stones,

a transverse cut just below the sternum
the forefinger and middle finger
forced in and up, following the
curve of the rib cage,
then fingers arched, drawn slowly down and back,
forcing all the insides up and out,
toward the palm and heel of the hand,
firm organs, well-placed, hot.
save the liver;

finally scouring back, toward the vent, the last of the

large intestine.

the insides string out, begin to wave, in the lapping

waters of the bay.
the bird has no feathers, head, or feet;
he is empty inside,
the rich body muscle that he moved by, the wing-beating
muscle
anchored to the blade-like high breast bone,
is what you eat.

The black iron frying pan on the coals,

two birds singed in flame,
bacon, onion, and garlic
browning, then steaming with a lid

put the livers in,

half a bird apiece and bulghour

passed about the fireon metal plates,
dense firm flesh,

56
 dark and rich,
gathered news of skies and seas.

at dawn
looking out from the dunes
no birds at all but
three curlew

ker4ewl

ker-lew!

pacing and glancing around.

I
Baja: Bahia de Concepcion, '69

57
TWO FAWNS THAT DIDN'T SEE
THE LIGHT THIS SPRING

A friend in a tipi in the

Northern Rockies went out
hunting white tail with a
.22 and creeped up on a few
day-bedded, sleeping, shot
what he thought was a buck.
"It was a doe, and she was
carrying a fawn."
He cured the meat without
salt; sliced it following the
grain.

A friend in the Nothern Sierra

hita doe with her car. It
walked out calmly in the lights,

"And when we butchered her

there was a fawn— about so long-
so tiny— but all formed and right.

It had spots. And the little

hooves were soft and white."

58
TWO IMMORTALS

Sitting on a bench by the Rogue River, Oregon, looking at

a landform map. Two older gents approached and one, with
baseball cap, began to sing: "California Here I Come"— he
must have seen the Hcense. Asked me if I'd ever heard of
Texas Slim. Yes. And he said the song "If I Had the Wings of
an Angel" was his, had been writ by him, "I was in the peni-
tentiary." "Let me shake your hand! That's a good song" I
said, and he showed me his hand: faint blue traces of tattoo on
the back, on the bent fingers. And if I hit you with this hand
it's L-O-V-E. And if I hit you with this hand it's H-A-T-E.

His friend, in a red and black buffalo check jacket stuck

his hand out, under my nose, missing the forefinger. "How'd
I lose that!" "How?" "An axe!"
Texas Slim said "I'm just giving him a ride. Last year his
wife died." The two ambled off, chuckling, as Kai and Gen
came running back up from the banks of Rogue River, hands
full of round river stones.

Looking at the map, it was the space inside the loop of the
upper Columbia, eastern Washington plateau country. "Chan-
nelled Scablands."

59
RAIN IN ALLEGHANY

standing in the thunder-pouring

heavy drops of water
—dusty summer-
drinking beer just after driving
all the way around the
watershed of rivers

rocky slopes and bumpy cars

its awkward land
a skinny
like a workt-out miner's hand
& how we love it
have some beer and rain,
stopping on our way,
in Alleghany

Alleghany California, home of the Sixteen to One Mine.

60
AVOCADO

The Dharma is like an Avocado!

Some parts so ripe you can't believe it,

But it's good.

And other places hard and green
Without much flavor,
Pleasing those who like their eggs well-cooked.

And the skin is thin,

The great big round seed
In the middle,
Isyour own Original Nature-
Pure and smooth,
Almost nobody ever splits it open
Or ever tries to see
If it will grow.

Hard and slippery.

It looks like
You should plant it— but then
It shoots out thru the
fingers-
gets away.

61
WHAT STEPS

Disciple: "Why is there evil in the universe?'

Ramakrishna: "To thicken the plot.'

What steps.
Philip shaving his head,
Keith looney,
Allen benign,
Dick in charge,
Not magic, not transcendence exactly
but— all created things are of the Mother—
or— the un-created
day by day
stepping in
to the power within.
What steps
In the starry night.
Tara's eyes
revolvers clicking
raccoon eyes shine back
lanterns fading
(Bhagavan Das like a National Park)
putting chains on
in the mud.

To turn our mad dance partner spinning laughing

ashes, ashes,
—all fall down.

62
WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN

In the high seat, before-dawn dark,

PoHshed hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging on Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.

63
BEDROCK
for Masa

Snowmelt pond warm granite

we make camp,
no thought of finding more.
and nap
and leave our minds to the wind.

on the bedrock, gently tilting,

sky and stone,

teach me to be tender.

the touch that nearly misses-

brush of glances-
tiny steps—
that finally cover worlds
of hard terrain,
cloud wisps and mists
gathered into slate blue
bolts of summer rain.

tea together in the purple starry eve;

new moon soon to set,
why does it take so
long to learn to
love,
we laugh
and grieve.

64
 THE DAZZLE
for Richard and Michael

the dazzle, the seduction the

design
intoxicated and quivering,
bees? is it why does
flowers? this
seed move around.
the one
divides itself, divides, and divides again.
"we all know where that leads"
blinding storms of gold pollen.
—grope through that?
the dazzle
and the blue clay.
"all that moves, loves to sing"
the roots are at work.
unseen.

65
"ONE SHOULD NOT TALK TO A SKILLED
HUNTER ABOUT WHAT IS FORBIDDEN
BY THE BUDDHA"
—Hsiang-yen

A gray fox, female, nine pounds three ounces.

39 5/8" long with tail.
Peeling skin back (Kai
reminded us to chant the Shingyo first)

cold pelt, crinkle; and musky smell

mixed with dead-body odor starting.

Stomach content: a whole ground squirrel well chewed

plus one lizard foot
and somewhere from inside the ground squirrel
a bit of aluminum foil.

The secret.
and the secret hidden deep in that.

66
LMFBR

Death himself,
(Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor)
stands grinning, beckoning.
Plutonium tooth-glow.
Eyebrows buzzing.
Strip-mining scythe.

Kali dances on the dead stiff cock.

Aluminum beer cans, plastic spoons,

plywood veneer, PVC pipe, vinyl seat covers,
don't exactly burn, don't quite rot,
flood over us.

robes and garbs

of the Kall-yuga

end of days.

67
WALKING HOME FROM
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI'

Walking home from "The Duchess of Malfi"

Bellatrixand Rigel gleam out of deep pits
Torn in the sea-cloud
blown east from the Golden Gate

Months in the cabin: rain,

cold, hard floor, leaking roof
beautiful walls and windows-
feeding birds

once I
Struck and bit on thought
Of being
Being suffering.
Fought free, tearing hook and line
(my mind)—
Thus was taught.
Pains of death and love.
Birth and war,
wreckt earth,

bless
With more love,

not less.

Berkeley: 55

68
MAGPIE'S SONG

Six A.M.,
Sat down on excavation gravel
by juniper and desert S.P. tracks
interstate 80 not far off
between trucks
Coyotes— maybe three
howling and yapping from a rise.

Magpie on a bough
Tipped his head and said,

"Here in the mind, brother

Turquoise blue.
I wouldn't fool you.
Smell the breeze
It came through all the trees
No need to fear
What's ahead
Snow up on the hills west
Will be there every year
be at rest.

A on the ground—
feather
The wind sound-

Here in the Mind, Brother,

Turquoise Blue"

69
FOR THE CHILDREN
O WATERS

O waters
washus, me,
under the wrinkled granite
straight-up slab,

and sitting by camp in the pine shade

Nanao sleeping,
mountains humming and crumbling
snowfields melting
soil

building on tiny ledges

for wild onions and the flowers
Blue
Polemonium

great
earth
sangha

73
GEN

Gen
little frown
buried in her breast
and long black hair
Gen for milk
Gen for sleep
Gen for looking-over-shoulder
far beyond the waving eucalyptus
limbs and farther dreaming crow
flying slow and steady for the ocean;
eyes over drippy nipple
at the rising shadow sun
whales of cool and dark,
Gen patted-on-the-head by Kai,
"don't cry"

74
DUSTY BRACES

O you ancestors
lumber schooners
big moustache
long-handled underwear
sticks out under the cuffs

tan stripes on each shoulder,

dusty braces-
nine bows
nine bows
you bastards
my fathers
and grandfathers, stiff-necked
punchers, miners, dirt farmers, railroad-men

killd off the cougar and grizzly

nine bows. Your itch

in my boots too,

—your sea roving

tree hearted son.

75
THE JEMEZ PUEBLO RING

Lost in the cracks of the walls or floors in Kyoto

Fell throughand missed and sifted out
when
the house was razed,
Foundations poured and apartments raised above it-

la forty years the apartments useless and torn down,

scrap wood burned for cooking and
bath fires—

Another sixty passes, the land is good;

With an ox they snake off concrete shards—

On the tines of the fork

in the black soil
the crusted ring,
wiped with the thumb
turquoise stone still blue.

The expert looked at and said,

it

from the century past,

this is a ring
when there was travel and trade,
from across the sea, east.

Silver, and blue of the desert sky.

the style is old.
though we never see them now,

Those corn-growing black-haired villagers

are still there, making such rings,
I'm told-

76
TOMORROW'S SONG

The USA slowly lost its mandate

in the middle and later twentieth century
it never gave the mountains and rivers,
trees and animals,
a vote,
all the people turned away from it
myths die; even continents are impermanent

Turtle Island returned.

my friend broke open a dried coyote-scat
removed a ground squirrel tooth
pierced it, hung it
from the gold ring
in his ear.

We look to the future with pleasure

we need no fossil fuel

getpower within
grow strong on less.

Grasp the tools and move in rhythm side by side

flash gleams of wit and knowledge
silent

eye to eye
sit still like cats or snakes or stones
as whole and holding as
the blue black sky.
gentle and innocent as wolves
as tricky as a prince.

At work and in our place:

in the service

of the wilderness
of life

of death
of the Mother's breasts!

11
WHAT HAPPENED HERE BEFORE

-300,000,000-

First a sea: soft sands, muds, and marls

—loading, compressing, heating, crumpling,
crushing, recrystallizing, infiltrating,
several times lifted and submerged,
intruding molten granite magma
deep-cooled and speckling,
gold quartz fills the cracks—

-80,000,000-

sea-bed strata raised and folded,

granite far below,
warm quiet centuries of rains
(make dark red tropic soils)
wear down two miles of surface,
lay bare the veins and tumble heavy gold
in steambeds
slate and schist rock-riffles catch it-

volcanic ash floats down and dams the streams,

piles up the gold and gravel—

-3,000,000-

flowing north, two rivers joined,

to make a wide long lake,
and then it tilted and the rivers fell apart
all running west
to cut the gorges of the Feather,
Bear, and Yuba.

78
Ponderosa pine, manzanita, black oak, mountain yew.
deer, coyote, bluejay, gray squirrel,
ground squirrel, fox, blacktail hare,
ringtail, bobcat, bear,
all came to live here.

-40,000-

And human people came with basket hats and nets

winter-houses underground
yew bows painted green,
feasts and dances for the boys and girls
songs and stories in the smoky dark.

-125-

Then came the white man : tossed up trees and

boulders with big hoses,
going after that old gravel and the gold,
horses, apple-orchards, card-games,
pistol-shooting, churches, county jail.

We asked, who the land belonged to.

and where one pays tax.
(two gents who never used it twenty years,
and before them the widow
of the son of the man
who got him a patented deed
on a worked-out mining claim,)
laid hastyon land that was deer and acorn
grounds of the Nisenan?
branch of the Maidu?

79
 )

(they never had a chance to speak, even,

their name.
(and who remembers the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.)

the land belongs to itself.

"no self in self; no self in things"

Turtle Island swims

in the ocean-sky swirl-void
biting its tail while the worlds go
on-and-off
winking

& Mr. Tobiassen, a Cousin Jack,

assesses the county tax.
(the tax is our body-mind, guest at the banquet
Memorial and Annual, in honor
of sunlight grown heavy and tasty
while moving up food-chains
in search of a body with eyes and a fairly large
brain-
to look back at itself
on high.)

now,

we sit here near the diggings

in the forest, by our fire, and watch
the moon and planets and the shooting stars—

my sons ask, who are we?

drying apples picked from homestead trees
drying berries, curing meat,
shooting arrows at a bale of straw.

military jets head northeast, roaring, every dawn.

80
my sons ask, who are they?

WE SHALL SEE
WHO KNOWS
HOW TO BE
Bluejay screeches from a pine.

81
TOWARD CLIMAX

I.

salt seas, mountains, deserts-

cell mandala holding water
nerve network linking toes and eyes
fins legs wings-
teeth, all-purpose little early mammal molars,
primate flat-foot
front fore-mounted eyes-

watching at the forest-grassland (interface

richness) edge.
scavenge, gather, rise up on rear legs,
running— grasping— hand and eye;
hunting,
calling others to the stalk, the drive.

note sharp points of split bone; broken rock.

brain-size blossoming
on the balance of the neck,
tough skin— good eyes— sharp ears-
move in bands.
milkweed fiber rolled out on the thigh;
nets to carry fruits or meat.

catch fire, move on.

eurasia tundra reindeer herds
sewn hide clothing, mammoth-rib-framework tent.

Bison, bear, skinned and split;

opening animal chests and bellies, skulls,

bodies just like ours—

pictures in caves.

82
send sound off the mouth and lips
formal complex grammars transect
inner structures & the daily world-

big herds dwindle

(—did we kill them?
thousand-mile front of prairie fire—)
ice age warms up
learn more plants, netting, trapping, boats,
bow and arrow, dogs,
mingle bands and families in and out like language
kin to grubs and trees and wolves

dance and sing,

begin to go "beyond"— reed flute-
buried baby wrapped in many furs-
great dream-time tales to tell.

squash blossom in the garbage heap.

start farming,
cows won't stay away, start herding,
weaving, throwing clay,
get better off, get class,
make lists, start writing down.

forget wild plants, their virtues

lose dream-time
lose largest size of brain-

get safer, tighter, wrapped in,

winding smaller, spreading wider,

laytowns out in streets in rows,
and build a wall.

drain swamp for wet-rice grasses, burn back woods,

herd men hke cows,
have slaves build a fleet

83
raid for wealth— bronze weapons
horse and wagon— iron— war.

study stars and figure central

never-moving Pole Star King.

II.

From "King" project a Law. (Foxy self-

survival sense is Reason, since it "works")
and Reason gets ferocious as it goes for
order throughout nature— turns Law back on
nature. (A rooster was burned at the stake
for laying an egg. Unnatural. 1474.)

III.

science walks in beauty:

nets are many knots

skin is border-guard, a pelt is borrowed warmth;
a bow is the flex of a limb in the wind
a giant downtown building
is a creekbed stood on end.

detritus pathways, "delayed and complex ways

to pass the food through webs."

maturity, stopand think, draw on the mind's

stored richness,memory, dream, half-digested
image of your life, "detritus pathways"— feed
the many tiny things that feed an owl.
send heart boldly travelling,
on the heat of the dead & down.

84
IV.

two logging songs

Clear-cut

Forestry. "How
Many people
Were harvested
In Viet-Nam?"

Clear-cut."Some
Were children,
Some were over-ripe.'

Virgin

A virgin
Forest
Is ancient; many-
Breasted,
Stable; at
Climax.

85
FOR THE CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

86
AS FOR POETS

As for poets
The Earth Poets
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.

The Air Poets

Play out the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem,
Curling back on the same thrust.

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire Poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

The first

Water Poet
Stayed down six years.
He was covered with seaweed.
The life in his poem
Left millions of tiny
Different tracks
Criss-crossing through the mud.

87
With the Sun and Moon
In his belly,
The Space Poet
Sleeps.
No end to the sky-
But his poems,
Like wild geese,
Fly off the edge.

A Mind Poet
Stays in the house.
The house is empty
And it has no walls.
The poem
Is seen from all sides,

Everywhere,
At once.

88
PLAIN TALK
FOUR CHANGES

Four Changes was written in the summer of '69 in response

to an evident need for a few practical and visionary sugges-
tions. Michael McClure, Richard Brautigan, Steve Beckwitt,
Keith Lampe, CHff Humphreys, Alan Watts, Allen Hoffman,
Stewart Brand, and Diane de Prima were among those who
read it during its formative period and offered suggestions and
criticisms. Itwas printed and distributed widely, free, through
the help of Alan Watts and Robert Shapiro. Several other free
editions circulated, including one beautifully printed version by
Noel Young of Santa Barbara. Far from perfect and in some
parts already outdated, it may still be useful. Sections in brack-
ets are recent commentary.
Whatever happens, we must not go into a plutonium-based
economy. If the concept of a steady-state economy can be
grasped and started in practice by say, 1980, we may be able
to dodge the blind leap into the liquid metal fast breeder
reactor— and extensive strip-mining— a path once entered, hard
to turn back.
My Teacher once said to me,
—become one with the knot itself,

til it dissolves away,

—sweep the garden,
—any size.

I. Population

The Condition

Position: Man is but a part of the fabric of life— dependent

on the whole fabric for his very existence. As the most highly
developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the un-
known evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be re-

spected, and act as gentle steward of the earth's community

of being.

91
Situation: There are now too many human beings, and the
problem growing rapidly worse. It is potentially disastrous
is

not only for the human race but for most other life forms.

Goal: The goal would be half of the present world population,

or less.

A ction

Social/political: First, a massive effort to convince the govern-

ments and leaders of the world that the problem is severe. And
that all talk about raising food-production— well intentioned as
it is— simply puts off the only real solution: reduce popula-
tion. Demand immediate participation by all countries in pro-
grams to legalize abortion, encourage vasectomy and steriliza-
tion (provided by free clinics)— free insertion of intrauterine
loops— try to correct traditional cultural attitudes that tend to
force women into child-bearing— remove income tax deduc-
tions for more than two children above a specified income level,
and scale it so that lower income families are forced to be
careful too— or pay families to limit their number. Take a
vigorous stand against the policy of the right wing in the
Catholic hierarchy and any other institutions that exercise an
irresponsible social force in regard to this question; oppose and
correct simple-minded boosterism that equates population
growth with continuing prosperity. Work ceaselessly to have
all political questions be seen in the light of this prime problem.

[The governments are the wrong agents to address. Their most

likely use of a problem, or crisis, is to seize it as another
excuse for extending their own powers. Abortion should be
legal and voluntary, but questions about vasectomy side-effects
still come up. Great care should be taken that no one is ever

tricked or forced into sterilization. The whole population issue

is fraught with contradictions: but the fact stands that by
standards of planetary biological welfare there are already too
many human beings. The long-range answer is steady low
birth rate. Area by area of the globe, the criteria of "optimum

92
population" should be based on the sense of total ecological
health for the region, including flourishing wildlife populations.]

The community: Explore other social structures and marriage

forms, such group marriage and polyandrous marriage,
as
which provide family life but many less children. Share the
pleasures of raising children widely, so that all need not
directly reproduce to enter into this basic human experience.
We must hope that no woman would give birth to more than
one [two?] child, during this period of crisis. Adopt children.
Let reverence for life and reverence for the feminine mean
also a reverence for other species, and future human lives, most
of which are threatened.

Our own heads: "I am a child of all life, and all living beings
are my brothers and my children and grandchildren.
sisters,

And there is a child within me waiting to be brought to birth,

the baby of a new and wiser self." Love, Love-making, a man
and woman together, seen as the vehicle of mutual realization,
where the creation of new selves and a new world of being is

as important as reproducing our kind.

TL Pollution

The Condition

Position: Pollution is of two types. One sort results from an

excess of some fairly ordinary substance— smoke, or solid waste
—which cannot be absorbed or transmitted rapidly enough to
offset its introduction into the environment, thus causing
changes the great cycle is not prepared for. (All organisms
have wastes and by-products, and these are indeed part of the
total biosphere: energy is passed along the line and refracted
in various ways, "the rainbow body." This is cycling, not pollu-
tion.) The other sort is powerful modern chemicals and poi-
sons, products of recent technology, which the biosphere is
totally unprepared for. Such is DDT and similar chlorinated

93
hydrocarbons— nuclear testing fall-out and nuclear waste— poi-
son gas, germ and virus storage and leakage by the military;
and chemicals which are put into food, whose long-range effects
on human beings have not been properly tested.

Situation: The human race in the last century has allowed its

production and scattering of wastes, by-products, and various

chemicals to become excessive. Pollution is directly harming

lifeon the planet: which is to say, ruining the environment for

humanity itself. We are fouling our air and water, and living
in noise and filth that no "animal" would tolerate, while ad-
vertising and politicians try and tell us we've never had it so
good. The dependence of the modern governments on this kind
of untruth leads to shameful mind-pollution: mass media and
much school education.

Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the presence of

Pelican and Osprey and Gray Whale in our lives; salmon and
trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams.

Action

Social/political: Effective international legislation banning

DDT and other poisons— with no fooling around. The collusion
of certain scientists with the pesticide industry and agri-business
in trying to block this legislation must be brought out in the
open. Strong penalties for water and air pollution by indus-
tries— "Pollution is somebody's profit." Phase out the internal
combustion engine and fossil fuel use in general— more research
into non-polluting energy sources; solar energy; the tides. No
more kidding the public about nuclear waste disposal: it's

impossible to do it and nuclear-generated electricity

safely,
cannot be seriously planned for as it stands now. [Energy:
we know a lot more about this problem now. Non-polluting
energy resources such as solar or tides, would be clearly inade-
quate to supply the power needs of the world techno-industrial
cancer. Five hundred years of strip-mining is not acceptable.

94
To go into the liquid metal fast breeder reactor on the gamble
that we'll come out with the fusion process perfected is not
acceptable. Research should continue on nuclear power, but
divorced from any crash-program mentality. This means, con-
serve energy. "Do more
with less." "Convert Waste into Trea-
sure."] Stop allgerm and chemical warfare research and ex-
perimentation; work toward a hopefully safe disposal of the
present staggering and stupid stockpiles of H-bombs, cobalt
gunk, germ and poison tanks and cans. Laws and sanctions
against wasteful use of paper etc. which adds to the solid wastes
of cities— develop methods of recycling solid urban wastes.
Recycling should be the basic principle behind all waste-dis-
posal thinking. Thus, all be reusable; old cans
bottles should
should make more cans; old newspapers back into newsprint
again. Stronger controls and research on chemicals in foods. A
toward a more varied and sensitive type of agriculture
shift

(more small-scale and subsistence farming) would eliminate

much of the call for blanket use of pesticides.

The community: DDT and such: don't use them. Air pollu-
tion: use less cars.Cars pollute the air, and one or two people
riding lonely in a huge car is an insult to intelligence and the
Earth. Share rides, legalize hitch-hiking, and build hitch-hiker
waiting stations along the highways. Also— a step toward the
new world— walk more; look for the best routes through beau-
tiful countryside for long-distance walking trips: San Fran-

cisco to Los Angeles down the Coast Range, for example.

Learn how to use your own manure as fertilizer if you're in the
country— as the Far East has done for centuries. There's a
way, and it's safe. SoHd waste: boycott bulky wasteful Sunday
papers which use up trees. It's all just advertising anyway,
which is artificially inducing more energy consumption. Refuse
paper bags at the store. Organize Park and Street clean-up
festivals. Don't work in any way for or with an industry which

pollutes, and don't be drafted into the military. Don't waste.

(A monk and an old master were once walking in the moun-
tains. They noticed a little hut upstream. The monk said, "A

95
wise hermit must live there"— the master said, "That's no
wise hermit, you see that lettuce leaf floating down the stream,
he's a Waster." Just then an old man came running down
the hill with his beard flying and caught the floating lettuce
leaf.) Carry your own jug to the winery and have it filled
from the barrel.

Our own heads: Part of the trouble with talking about some-
thing like DDT is that the use of it is not just a practical de-
vise, it's almost an estabUshment religion. There
is something

in Western culture that wants to totally wipe out creepy-

crawlies, and feels repugnance for toadstools and snakes. This
is fear of one's own deepest natural inner-self wilderness areas,
and the answer Relax around bugs, snakes, and your
is, relax.
own hairy dreams. Again, we all should share our crops with
a certain percentage of buglife as "paying our dues." Thoreau
says: "How then can the harvest fail? ShaU I not rejoice also
at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary
of the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the fields
fiU the farmer's barns. The true husbandman wiU cease from

anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the

woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor
with every day, reUnquish all claim to the produce of his fields,
and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits
also." In the realm of thought, inner experience, conscious-
ness, as in the outward realm of interconnection, there is a dif-
ference between balanced cycle, and the excess which cannot
be handled. When the balance is right, the mind recycles from
highest illuminations to the muddy blinding anger or grabbiness
which sometimes seizes us all; the alchemical "transmutation."

III. Consumption

The Condition

Position: Everything that lives eats food, and is food in turn.

96
This complicated animal, man, rests on a vast and delicate
pyramid of energy-transformations. To grossly use more than
you need, to destroy, is biologically unsound. Much of the pro-
duction and consumption of modern societies is not necessary
or conducive to spiritual and cultural growth, let alone sur-
vival; and is behind much greed and envy, age-old causes of
social and international discord.

Situation: Man's careless use of "resources" and his total de-

pendence on certain substances such as fossil fuels (which
are being exhausted, slowly but certainly) are having harmful
effects on the other members of the life-network. The com-
all

plexity of modern technology renders whole populations vul-

nerable to the deadly consequences of the loss of any one key
resource. Instead of independence we have overdependence on
life-giving substances such as water, which we squander. Many
species of animals and birds have become extinct in the service
of fashion fads— or fertilizer— or industrial oil— the soil is being
used up; in fact mankind has become a locustlike blight on the
planet that will leave a bare cupboard for its own children-
all the while in a kind of Addict's Dream of affluence, comfort,
eternal progress— using the great achievements of science to
produce software and swill.

Goal: Balance, harmony, humility, growth which is a mutual

growth with Redwood and Quail; to be a good member of the
great community of living creatures. True affluence is not need-
ing anything.

Action

Social/political: It must be demonstrated ceaselessly that a

continually "growing economy" is no longer healthy, but a
Cancer. And that the criminal waste which is allowed in the
name of competition— especially that ultimate in wasteful need-
less competition, hot wars and cold wars with "Communism"
(or "Capitalism")— must be halted totally with ferocious energy

97
and decision. Economics must be seen as a small sub-branch
of Ecology, and production/distribution/consumption handled
by companies or unions or co-operatives, with the same ele-
gance and spareness one sees in nature. Soil banks; open
spaces; [logging to be truly based on sustained yield; the U.S.
Forest Service is— sadly— now the lackey of business.] Protec-
tion for all scarce predators and varmints: "Support your right
to arm bears." Damn the International Whaling Commission
which is our precious, wise whales; ab-
selling out the last of
solutely no further development of roads and concessions in
National Parks and Wilderness Areas; build auto campgrounds
in the least desirable areas. Consumer boycotts in response to
dishonest and unnecessary products. Radical Co-ops. Polit-
ically, blast both "Communist" and "CapitaUst" myths of
progress, and all crude notions of conquering or controUing
nature.

The community: Sharing and creating. The inherent aptness

of communal life— where large tools are owned jointly and used
efficiently. The power of renunciation: If enough Americans

refused to buy a new car for one given year, it would perma-
nently alter the American economy. Recycling clothes and
equipment. Support handicrafts, gardening, home skills, mid-
wifery, herbs— all the things that can make us independent,
beautiful and whole. Learn to break the habit of unnecessary
possessions— a monkey on everybody's back— but avoid a self-
abnegating anti-joyous self-righteousness. Simplicity is light,

carefree, neat and loving— not a self-punishing ascetic trip. (The

great Chinese poet Tu Fu said, "The ideas of a poet should
be noble and simple.") Don't shoot a deer if you don't know
how to use all the meat and preserve that which you can't
eat, to tan the hide and use the leather— to use it all, with

gratitude, right down to the sinew and hooves. Simplicity and

mindfulness in diet is a starting point for many people.

Our own heads: It is hard to even begin to guage how much

a complication of possessions, the notions of "my and mine,"
stand between us and a true, clear, liberated way of seeing

98
the world. To live lightly on the earth, to be aware and alive,
to be free of egotism, to be in contact with plants and animals,
starts with simple concrete acts. The inner principle is the
insight that we are interdependent energy-fields of great po-
tential wisdom and compassion— expressed in each person as
a superb mind, a handsome and complex body, and the almost
magical capacity of language. To these potentials and capaci-
ties, "owning things" can add nothing of authenticity. "Clad in
the sky, with the earth for a pillow."

IV. Transformation

The Condition

Position: Everyone is the result of four forces: the conditions

of this known-universe (matter/energy forms and ceaseless
change); the biology of his species; his individual genetic
heritage and the culture he's born into. Within this web of forces
there are certain spaces and loops which allow to some i>er-
sons the experience of inner freedom and illumination. The
gradual exploration of some of these spaces is "evolution"
and, for human what "history" could increasingly be.
cultures,
We have it within our deepest powers not only to change our
"selves" but to change our culture. If man is to remain on
earth he must transform the five-millenia-long urbanizing civ-
ilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive harmony-
oriented wild-minded scientific-spiritual culture. "Wildness is

the state of complete awareness. That's why we need it."

Situation: which has made us so successful a

Civilization,
and now threatens us with its inertia.
species, has overshot itself
There also is some evidence that civilized life isn't good for
the human gene pool. To achieve the Changes we must change
the very foundations of our society and our minds.

Goal: Nothing short of total transformation will do much good.

What we envision is a planet on which the human population

99
livesharmoniously and dynamically by employing various so-
phisticatedand unobtrusive technologies in a world environ-
ment which is "left natural." Specific points in this vision:

—A healthy and spare population of all races, much less in

number than today.

—Cultural and individual pluralism, unified by a type of world

tribal council. Division by natural and cultural boundaries
rather than arbitrary political boundaries.

—A technology of communication, education, and quiet trans-

portation, land-use being sensitive to the properties of each
region. Allowing, thus, the Bison to return to much of the
high plains. Careful but intensive agriculture in the great
alluvial valleys; deserts left wild for those who would live there
by skill. Computer technicians who run the plant part of the
year and walk along with the Elk in their migrations during
the rest.

—A basic cultural outlook and social organization that inhibits

power and property-seeking while encouraging exploration and
challenge in things like music, meditation, mathematics, moun-
taineering, magic, and all other ways of authentic being-in-the-
world. Women totally free and equal. A new kind of family-
responsible, but more festive and relaxed— is implicit.

Action

seems evident that there are throughout the

Social/political: It
world certain social and religious forces which have worked
through history toward an ecologically and culturally enlight-
ened state of affairs. Let these be encouraged: Gnostics, hip
Marxists, Teilhard de Chardin Catholics, Druids, Taoists, Bi-
ologists, Witches, Yogins, Bhikkus, Quakers, Sufis, Tibetans,
Zens, Shamans,Bushmen, American Indians, Polynesians,
Anarchists, Alchemists ... the list is long. Primitive cultures,
communal and ashram movements, co-operative ventures.

100
Since it doesn't seem practical or even desirable to think that
direct bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to
consider this a continuing "revolution of consciousness" which
will be won not by guns but by seizing the key images, myths,
archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won't seem
worth living unless one's on the transforming energy's side. We
must take over "science and technology" and release its real
possibilities and powers in the service of this planet— which,
after all produced us and it.

[More concretely: no transformation without our feet on the

ground. Stewardship means, for most of us, find your place on
the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there— the tire-

some but tangible work of school boards, county supervisors,

local foresters— local politics. Even while holding in mind the
largest scale of potential change. Get a sense of workable ter-
ritory, learn about it, and start acting point by point. On all
levels from national to local the need to move toward steady
state economy— equilibrium, dynamic balance, inner-growth
stressed— must be taught. Maturity/diversity/climax/creativity.]

The community: New schools, new classes, walking in the

woods and cleaning up the streets. Find psychological tech-
niques for creating an awareness of "self" which includes the
social and natural environment. "Consideration of what specific
language forms— symbolic systems— and social institutions con-
stitute obstacles to ecological awareness." Without falling into
a facile interpretation of McLuhan, we can hope to use the
media. Let no one be ignorant of the facts of biology and re-
lated disciplines; bring up our children as part of the wildlife.
Some communities can establish themselves in backwater rural
areas and flourish— others maintain themselves in urban cen-
ters, and the two types work together— a two-way flow of ex-
perience, people, money and home-grown vegetables. Ulti-
mately cities may exist only as joyous tribal gatherings and
fairs, to dissolve after a few weeks. Investigating new life-styles

is our work, as is the exploration of Ways to explore our inner

realms— with the known dangers of crashing that go with such.

101
Master the archaic and the primitive as models of basic nature-
related cultures— as well as themost imaginative extensions of
science— and build a community where these two vectors cross.

Our own heads: Is where it starts. Knowing that we are the

first human beings in history to have so much of man's culture
and previous experience available to our study, and being
freeenough of the weight of traditional cultures to seek out
a larger identity; the first members of a civilized society since
the Neolithic to wish to look clearly into the eyes of the wild
and see our self-hood, our family, there. We have these ad-
vantages to set off the obvious disadvantages of being as
screwed up as we are— which gives us a chance to penetrate
fair
some of the riddles of ourselves and the universe, and to go
beyond the idea of "man's survival" or "survival of the bio-
sphere" and to draw our strength from the realization that at
the heart of thingsis some kind of serene and ecstatic process

which is beyond qualities and beyond birth-and-death. "No

need to survive!" "In the fires that destroy the universe at the
end of the kalpa, what survives?"— "The iron tree blooms in
the void!"

Knowing that nothing need be done, is where we begin to move

from.

102
"ENERGY IS ETERNAL DELIGHT'

A young woman at Sir George Williams University in Mon-

treal asked me, "What do you fear most?" I found myself
answering "that the diversity and richness of the gene pool will
be destroyed—" and most people there understood what was
meant.
The treasure of life is the richness of stored information in
the diverse genes of all living beings. If the human race, follow-
ing on some were to survive at the expense
set of catastrophes,
of many plant and animal species, it would be no victory.
Diversity provides life with the capacity for a multitude of
adaptations and responses to long-range changes on the planet.
The possibility remains that at some future time another evo-
lutionary line might carry the development of consciousness
to clearer levels than our family of upright primates.
The United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan have
a habit. They are addicted to heavy energy use, great gulps
and injections of fossil fuel. As fossil-fuel reserves go down,
they will take dangerous gambles with the future health of the
biosphere (through nuclear power) to keep up their habit.
For several centuries Western civilization has had a priapic
drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of po-
litical and economic power, termed "progress." In the Judaeo-
Christian worldview men are seen as working out their ulti-
mate destinies (paradise? perdition?) with planet earth as the
stage for the drama— trees and animals mere props, nature a
vast supply depot. Fed by fossil fuel, this religio-economic view
has become a cancer: uncontrollable growth. It may finally
choke and drag much else down with it.
itself,

The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem
now is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth-
energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for
deeper knowledge of self and nature. Self-nature. Mother na-
ture. If people come to realize that there are many nonmaterial.

103
nondestructive paths of growth— of the highest and most fas-
cinating order— it would help dampen the common fear that
a steady state economy would mean deadly stagnation.
I spent a few years, some time back, in and around a train-

ing place. It was a school for monks of the Rinzai branch of

Zen Buddhism, in Japan. The whole aim of the community was
personal and universal liberation. In this quest for spiritual
freedom every man marched strictly to the same drum in mat-
ters of hours of work and meditation. In the teacher's room
one was pushed across sticky barriers into vast new spaces.
The training was traditional and had been handed down for
centuries—but the insights are forever fresh and new. The
beauty, refinement and truly civilized quality of that life has
no match in modern America. It is supported by hand labor
in small fields, gathering brushwood to heat the bath, well-
water and barrels of homemade pickles. The unspoken motto is
"Grow With Less." In the training place I lost my remaining
doubts about China.
The Buddhists teach all life, and for wild sys-
respect for
tems. Man's dependent on an interpenetrating net-
life is totally

work of wild systems. Eugene Odum, in his useful paper "The

Strategy of Ecosystem Development," points out how the
United States has the characteristics of a young ecosystem.
Some American Indian cultures have "mature" characteristics:
protection as against production, stability as against growth,
quality as against quantity. In Pueblo societies a kind of ulti-
mate democracy is and animals are also peo-
practiced. Plants
ple, and, through certain and dances, are given a place
rituals
and a voice in the political discussions of the humans. They are
"represented." "Power to all the people" must be the slogan.
On Hopi and Navajo land, at Black Mesa, the whole issue
is revolving at this moment. The cancer is eating away at the

breast of Mother Earth in the form of strip-mining. This to

provide electricity for Los Angeles. The defense of Black Mesa
is being sustained by traditional Indians, young Indian militants,

and longhairs. Black Mesa speaks to us through an ancient,

complex web of myth. She is sacred territory. To hear her voice

104
is to give up the European word "America" and accept the new-
old name for the continent, "Turtle Island."
The return to marginal farmland on the part of longhairs is

not some nostalgic replay of the nineteenth century. Here is

a generation of white people finally ready to learn from the

Elders.How to live on the continent as though our children,
and on down, for many ages, will still be here (not on the
moon). Loving and protecting this soil, these trees, these
wolves. Natives of Turtle Island.
A scaled-down, balanced technology is possible, if cut loose
from the cancer of exploitation-heavy-industry-perpetual
growth. Those who have already sensed these necessities and
have begun, whether in the country or the city, to "grow with
less," are the only counterculture that counts. Electricity for
Los Angeles is not energy. As Blake said: "Energy Is Eternal
Delight."

105
THE WILDERNESS

I am a poet. My teachers are other poets, American Indians,

and a few Buddhist priests in Japan. I am here is
The reason
because wish to bring a voice from the wilderness, my con-
I

stituency. I wish to be a spokesman for a realm that is not

usually represented either in intellectual chambers or in the
chambers of government.
1 was climbing Glacier Peak in the Cascades of Washington

several years ago, on one of the clearest days I had ever seen.
When we reached the summit of Glacier Peak we could see
almost to the Selkirks in Canada. We could see south far be-
yond the Columbia River to Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson.
And, of course, we could see Mount Adams and Mount Rainier.
We could see across Puget Sound to the ranges of the Olympic
Mountains. My companion, who is a poet, said: "You mean,
there is a senator for all this?"
Unfortunately, there isn't a senator for all that. And I would
like to think of a new definition humanism and a new
of
definition of democracy that would include the nonhuman, that
would have representation from those spheres. This is what I
think we mean by an ecological conscience.
I don't like Western culture because I think it has much in it

that is inherently wrong and that is at the root of the environ-

mental crisis that is not recent; it is very ancient; it has been
building up for a millennium. There are many things in West-
ern culture that are admirable. But a culture that alienates
itself from the very ground of its own being— from the wilder-

ness outside (that is to say, wild nature, the wild, self-contained,

self-informing ecosystems) and from that other wilderness, the
wilderness within— is doomed to a very destructive behavior,
ultimately perhaps self-destructive behavior.
The West is not the only culture that carries these destruc-
tive seeds. China had effectively deforested itself by 1000 A.D.

Transcript of a statement made at a seminar at The Center for the

Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, California,

106
India had effectively deforested itself by 800 A.D. The soils

of the Middle East were ruined even earlier. The forests that
once covered the mountains of Yugoslavia were stripped to
build the Roman fleet, and those mountains have looked like
Utah ever since. The soils of southern Italy and Sicily were
ruined by latifundia slave-labor farming in the Roman Empire.
The soils of the Atlantic seaboard in the United States were
effectively ruined before the American Revolution because of
the one-crop (tobacco) farming. So the same forces have been
at work in East and West.
You would not think a poet would get involved in these
things. But the voice that speaks to me as a poet, what West-
erners have called the Muse, is the voice of nature herself,
whom the ancient poets called the great goddess, the Magna
Mater. I regard that voice as a very real entity. At the root of
the problem where our civilization goes wrong is the mistaken
belief that nature is something less than authentic, that nature
is not as alive as man is, or as intelligent, that in a sense it is

dead, and that animals are of so low an order of inteUigence

and feeling, we need not take their feelings into account.
A drawn between primitive peoples and civilized peo-
line is

ples. I think there is a wisdom in the worldview of primitive

peoples that we have to refer ourselves to, and learn from.

If we are on the verge of postcivilization, then our next step

must take account of the primitive worldview which has tra-

ditionallyand intelligently tried to open and keep open lines of
communication with the forces of nature. You cannot com-
municate with the forces of nature in the laboratory. One of the
problems is that we simply do not know much about primitive
people and primitive cultures. If we can tentatively accommo-
date the possibility that nature has a degree of authenticity and
intelligence that requires that we look at it more sensitively,
then we can move to the next step. "Intelligence" is not really
the right word. The ecologist Eugene Odum uses the term
"biomass."
Life-biomass, he says, is stored information; living matter
is stored information in the cells and in the genes. He believes

107
there is more information of a higher order of sophistication
and complexity stored in a few square yards of forest than
there is in all the libraries of mankind. Obviously, that is a
different order of information. It is the information of the uni-
verse we live in. It is the information that has been flowing
for millions of years. In this total information context, man
may not be necessarily the highest or most interesting product.
Perhaps one of its most interesting experiments at the point
of evolution, if we can talk about evolution in this way, is not
man but a high degree of biological diversity and sophistication
opening to more and more possibilities. Plants are at the bot-
tom of the food chain; they do the primary energy transforma-
tion that makes all the life-forms possible. So perhaps plant-life
is what the ancients meant by the great goddess. Since plants
support the other life-forms, they became the "people" of the
land. And land— a country— is a region within which the
the
interactions of water, air,and soil and the underlying geology
and the overlying (maybe stratospheric) wind conditions all
go to create both the microclimates and the large climactic
patterns that make a whole sphere or realm of life possible.
The people in that realm include animals, humans, and a variety
of wild life.

What we must find a way to do, then, is incorporate the

other people— what the Sioux Indians called the creeping peo-
ple, and the standing people, and the flying people, and the
swimming people— into the councils of government. This isn't
as difficult as you might think. If we don't do it, they will
revolt against us. They will submit non-negotiable demands
about our stay on the earth. We are beginning to get non-
negotiable demands right now from the air, the water, the soil.
I would like to expand on what I mean by representation

here at the Center from these other fields, these other societies,
these other communities. Ecologists talk about the ecology of
oak communities, or pine communities. They are communities.
This institute— this Center— is of the order of a kiva of elders.
Its function is to maintain and transmit the lore of the tribe on

the highest levels. If it were doing its job completely, it would

108
have a cycle of ceremonies geared to the seasons, geared per-
haps to the migrations of the fish and to the phases of the
moon. It would be able to instruct in what rituals you follow
when a child is born, when someone reaches puberty, when
someone gets married, when someone dies. But, as you know,
in these fragmented times, one council cannot perform all
these functions at one time. Still it would be understood that
a council of elders, the caretakers of the lore of the culture,
would open themselves to representation from other life-forms.
Historically this has been done through art. The paintings of
bison and bears in the caves of southern France were of that
order. The animals were speaking through the people and mak-
ing their point. And when, in the dances of the Pueblo Indians
and other peoples, certain individuals became seized, as it
were, by the spirit of the deer, and danced as a deer would
dance, or danced the dance of the corn maidens, or imperson-
ated the squash blossom, they were no longer speaking for
humanity, they were taking it on themselves to interpret,
through their humanity, what these other life-forms were. That
is about all we know so far concerning the possibilities of in-
corporating spokesmanship for the rest of life in our democratic
society.
Let me describe how a friend of mine from a Rio Grande
pueblo hunts. He is twenty-seven years old. The Pueblo Indians,
and I think probably most of the other Indians of the Southwest,
begin their hunt, first,by purifying themselves. They take
emetics, a sweat bath, and perhaps avoid their wife for a few
days. They also try not to think certain thoughts. They go out
hunting in an attitude of humility. They make sure that they
need to hunt, that they are not hunting without necessity. Then
they improvise a song while they are in the mountains. They
sing aloud or hum to themselves while they are walking along.
It is a song to the deer, asking the deer to be willing to die for

them. They usually still-hunt, taking a place alongside a trail.

The feeling is that you are not hunting the deer, the deer is

coming to you; you make yourself available for the deer that
will present itself to you, that has given itself to you. Then

109
you shoot it. After you shoot it, you cut the head off and place
the head facing east. You sprinkle corn meal in front of the
mouth of the deer, and you pray to the deer, asking it to for-
give you for having killed it, to understand that we all need to
eat, and to please make a good report to the other deer spirits
that he has been treated well. One finds this way of handling
things and animals in all primitive cultures.

110
WHAT'S MEANT BY "HERE"

The and meadows of the lower ridge— fine deep

gentle slopes
groves that show what it once was all like, as on the Bureau of

Land Management parcel soon to be logged by Yuba River

Lumber Company, right next to Wepa land— and the shady,
somewhat brushy, but calm and growing woods of the most
of the ridge— a human space there. Enough room to fit a few
two-legged beings in.

Crackly grass and Blue oak, the special smells of pungent

sticky flowers, give way, climbing, through Digger pine and
into Black oak and Ponderosa pine; sweet birch, manzanita,
This is our home country. We dig wells and wonder
kitkitdizze.
where the water table comes from.
We wonder where the deer go in the summer heat, and
where they come from in the fall. How far east into the high
Sierra. In thirty steady climbing miles the ridge contacts the
crest, eight thousand Pure granite; little lakes. At zazen,
feet.

5:30 AM, the only sound beside the wind in the pines is the
empty log-trucks groaning up Tyler road, across the old hy-
draulic-mining diggings, heading out from coffee-in-the-dark to
timber sales far up the ridge in "checkerboard country"—
Southern Pacific and Tahoe National Forest sections inter-
mixed.
Down little ridge from Chuck and Franco's
the hogsback
place (we call now; but a year ago, it was just "the grassy
it

benches on the way to the river that you can see from the top
of Bald Mountain— we looked for Lew Welch there, too") is a
trail that was made on a Saturday community work day, a

direct route down leading to the great hole and the right-angle
bend of the South Fork of the Yuba, (named from Spanish uva,
grapes). It is, just exactly, where the last clear string-of-bones
of true Sierra Granite bares itself, and the river had to take
notice of that hardness, she did, she made a bend.
We went there one Monday in the summer with a ruck-
all

sack of dinner picnic things and spent the afternoon at lazy

111
swimming in the pippin-apple-green waters of the Yuba. Yuba
Ma. Her Womb-Realm Mandala center right where we were,
with only Bald Mountain (that ascetic) providing space for
eyes upstream— rocky brushy slopes.
So, the ridge and the river. Back up again by dark. Under
the pine and oak, three thousand feet, it's also cool. And only
three miles from a mailbox.
Watershed: west slope of the northern Sierra Nevada, south
slope of the east-west running ridge above the south fork, at the
level of Black oak mixed with Ponderosa pine.

112
ON "AS FOR POETS"

"Energy is Eternal Delight"— William Blake, in The Marriage

of Heaven and Hell. What are we to make of this?As the over-
developed world (the U.S., Japan, etc.) approaches an "energy
crisis" with shortages of oil and electric power (and some na-
tions plan a desperate gamble with nuclear generating plants)
we must remember that oil and coal are the stored energy of
the sun locked by ancient plant-life in its cells. "Renewable"
energy resources are the trees and flowers and all living beings
of today, especially plant-life doing the primary work of energy-
transfer.
On these fuels contemporary nations now depend. But there
is another kind of energy, in every living being, close to the
sun-source but in a different way. The power within. Whence?
"Delight." The delight of being alive while knowing of im-
permanence and death, the acceptance and mastery of this. A
definition:

Delight is the innocent joy arising

with the perception and realization of
the wonderful, empty, intricate,
inter-penetrating,
mutually-embracing, shining
single world beyond all discrimination
or opposites.*

* An alternative definition has been suggested by Dr. Edward Schafer

of Berkeley, who describes himself as "an imaginative but unreasonable
pedant" (but who is really a scholar of the prosody of artifacts, the
poetry of tools).

Delight is the sophisticated joy arising

with the perception and realization of
the wonderful, replete, intricate,
rich-reflecting,
uniquely aloof, polychrome
complex worlds beyond all indifference
to nuances.

113
 This joy is continually reflected in the poems and songs of
the world. "As for Poets" explores the realm of delight in terms
of the five elements that ancient Greek and China both saw as
the constituents of the physical world. To which the Buddhist
philosophers of India added a sixth, consciousness, or Mind. At
one point I was tempted to title this poem "The Five Elements
embracing; pierced by; Mind,"— as illustrated in the mudra
(hand position) generally seen on images of Vairocana Buddha

Earth is our Mother and a man or woman goes directly to

her, needing no intermediary.
Air is our breath, spirit, which becomes
inspiration; a flow
speech when *'sounded"— the curling backon the same thrust"
is what is meant in
close to the Japanese word Fushi {bushi
^ )— knot, or whorl in the grain, the word for song.
Fire must have a fuel and the heart's fuel is love. The love
that makes poetry burn is not just the green of this spring, but
draws on the ancient web of sympathetic, compassionate, and
behind our very existence, a stored energy
erotic acts that lies
in our genes and dreams— fossil love a sly term for that deep-
buried sweetness brought to conscious thought.
Water is creation, the mud we crawled on; the wash of tides
in the cells.The Water Poet is the Creator. His calligraphy is
the trails and tracks we living beings leave in each other; in
the world; his poem.
But swallow it all. Size is no problem, a little space encloses
a huge void. There, those great whorls, the stars hang. Who
can get outside the universe? But the poem was born elsewhere,
and need not stay. Like the wild geese of the Arctic it heads
home, far above the borders, where most things cannot cross.
Now, we are both in, and outside, the world at once. The
only place this can be is the Mind. Ah, what a poem. It is what
is, completely, in the past, present, and future simultaneously,

seeing being, and being seen.

Can we really do this? But we do. So we sing. Poetry is for all
men and women. The power within— the more you give, the
more you have to give— will still be our source when coal and
oil are long gone, and atoms are left to spin in peace.

114
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:
FIFTH PRINTING

GARY
SNYDER
Turtle Island
Describing the title of his latest collection of poetry and occasional
prose pieces, Gary Snyder writes in his introductory note that Turtle
Island is "the old/new name for the continent, based on many crea-

tion myths of the people who have been here for millennia, and
reapplied by some of them to 'North America' in recent years." The
nearly five dozen poems in the book range from the lucid, lyrical,
almost mystical to the mytho-biotic, while a few are frankly political.
All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of this land and
the ways by which we might become natives of the place, ceasing to
think and act (after all these centuries) as newcomers and invaders.
A tentative cross-fertilization of ecological thought with Buddhist
ideas of interpenetration is also suggested, reflecting the poet's own
life with his family and comrades in the foothills of the California
Sierras.
Also available clothbound, $6.75

[Other Gary Snyder Paperbooks: The Back Country, NDP249, $1.75;

Earth House Hold, NDP267, $1.95; Regarding Wave, NDP306, $1.75.]

Cover woodcut by Michael Corr; design by Gertrude Huston

A NEW DIRECTIONS PAPERBOOK NDP381 $1.95