A Pause For Beauty


One ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture,
and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
- Goethe

. . .

            Cold nose dripping, singing inside,
            creek music, heart music.

Man walks through forests of physical things that are also spiritual things, that watch him affectionately.
      - Charles Baudelaire

For All

Ah to be alive
            on a mid-September morn
            fording a stream
            barefoot, pants rolled up
            holding boots, pack on,
            sunshine, ice in the shadows,
            northern Rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard on toes

            cold nose dripping
            singing inside
            creek music, heart music
            smell of sun on gravel.

            I pledge allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the soil
            of Turtle Island
            one ecosystem
            in diversity
            under the sun--
With joyful interpenetration for all.
- Gary Snyder, The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations