“Lay down these words” (Gary Snyder)

Posted on by theresakishkan

stones

Some days I sit at my desk and look out the window for more time than I’d like to admit. There’s a group of 3 big Douglas firs and twice, sitting at my desk, I’ve seen a sow bear see me, here at my desk, and send her cubs up into the high reaches of one of the trees. When I went out to look more closely, from the safety of a second-storey deck, I could hear the cubs making little squeals and the mother grunting from the underbrush. The understory. There’s always a story in those woods. Just beyond where the firs grow, coyotes have denned for at least 20 years. Some years we hear them mate in February and it’s exactly what you’d expect: a high-pitched yipping and a more growly groan. Then silence. And all summer, though not constantly, various songs as one parent delivers food to the den or else the whole family responds to a firetruck or ambulance. I know I anthropomorphize the lives of the animals around me but honestly so many of the cycles are ours too. The mating, the raising of the pups, the bursts of song, and the lament at summer’s end as the young go their own way.

Some days I sit at my desk and read poetry while I look out the window. Lately it’s been Gary Snyder. As world events take up more and more of the oxygen (literally), the more I look to work that is grounded and quiet. That pays attention to the animals and plants, the divinity of weather, the beauty of rivers.

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
             placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
             in space and time
 
Last night we were reading in bed when we heard a barred owl calling. Just one. A month or so ago we heard several of them at once, probably a mated pair, and we heard a saw-whet too at the same time. But last night, a single owl. Open the window, I said to John, so we can tell how close it is. With the window open to the falling light, the owl kept calling, and maybe it was in the nearby arbutus or maybe one of the Douglas firs 40 or so feet away, but close enough to hear each note. Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all? I thought of my family, all far away, and I thought of the years we’d sit on the deck at night and call the owls, sometimes hearing one respond. Who cooks for you? It was almost always me, and I never once minded. I thought of all the nights we’d star-gaze, lying under a shower of meteors washing the darkness. The long pale river of the Milky Way, the W of Casseiopeia, one star for each of us, the seven stars of the Great Bear. Last night the owl reminded me of all the things I love and need to pay attention to closely again as the world whirls in its uncertainty. Lay down these words.
 
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
             riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
             straying planets,

Note: the poem is “Riprap”.

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Published by theresakishkan

I'm a writer living in paradise.

4 thoughts on ““Lay down these words” (Gary Snyder)”

  2. Here in the metropolis – raccoons, squirrels, skunks, possums, many birds, a coyote or two. And for me, carpenter bees drilling holes in my house. Nature ready to take over when we finally wipe ourselves out.

    1. I often wonder how long it would take. I’m reading John McPhee’s Coming Into the Country right now (well, re-reading some parts; other sections are new to me) and it’s interesting how often he describes a derelict cabin on the shores of a creek, with spruce growing from the sod roof.

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