June 9, 2002
A warm breeze is blowing in the woods today and I’m sitting on the sauna porch taking it all in. I have several jobs beckoning me, but they will just have to wait until I’m finished with my porch sitting. The sauna rests on a dry-lay stone wall that my Dad and I built from one of his numerous rockpiles generated from 50 years of working the ground. (Rocks are one thing New England has no shortage of!) Building a stone wall is like working on a life-size puzzle; piece by piece it slowly begins to take shape. Gary Snyder speaks of poetry in the same manner. This poem is from his first collection (Riprap) published in 1959.
riprap: a coble of stone laid on steep slick rock to make a trail for horses in the mountains RIPRAP 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: Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall riprap of things: Cobble of milky way, straying planets, These poems, people, lost ponies with Dragging saddles and rocky sure-foot trails. The worlds like an endless four-dimensional Game of go. ants and pebbles In the thin loam, each rock a word a creek-washed stone Granite: ingrained with torment of fire and weight Crystal and sediment linked hot all change, in thoughts, As well as things.