gary snyder, an american zen poet

After Work
The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood

we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine. Gary Snyder

Manzanita
Before dawn the coyotes
weave medicine songs
dream nets -- spirit baskets --
milky way music
they cook young girls with
to be woman;
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,
Misses 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'
Long Hair
Hunting Season:
Once every year, the Deer catch human beings. They
do various things which irresistibly draw men near them;
each one selects a certain man. The Deer shoots the man,
who is then compelled to skin it and carry its meat home
and eat it. Then the deer is inside the man. He waits and
hides in there, but the man doesn't know it. When
enough Deer have occupied enough men, they will strike all
at once. The men who don't have Deer in them will
also be taken by surprise, and everything will change some.
This is called "takeover from inside".

Deer Trails:

Deer trails run on the side hills
cross country access roads
dirt ruts to bone-white
board house ranches,
tumbled down.

Waist high through manzanita,
Through sticky, prickly, crackling
gold dry summer grass.

Deer trails lead to water,
Lead sideways all ways
Narrowing down to one best path --
And split --
And fade away to nowhere.

Deer trails slide under freeways
slip into cities
swing back and forth in crops and orchards
run up the sides of schools!

Deer spoor and crisscross dusty tracks
Are in the house: and coming out the walls:

And deer bound through my hair.

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.

Gary Snyder

Turtle Island
second shaman song
Squat in swamp shadows.
mosquitoes sting;
high light in cedar above.

Crouched in a dry vain frame
-- thirst for cold snow
-- green slime of bone marrow
Seawater fills each eye

Quivering in nerve and muscle
Hung in the pelvic cradle
Bones propped against roots
A blind flicker of nerve

Still hand moves out alone
Flowering and leafing
turning to quartz
Streaked rock congestion of karma
The long body of the swamp.
A mud-streaked thigh.

Dying carp biting air
in the damp grass,
River recedes. No matter.

Limp fish sleep in the weeds
The sun dries me as I dance
Gary Snyder