Howdy folks,
When I was in Colorado, I missed Brooklyn; now, back home in Brooklyn, I miss being in Colorado. I’ve been working on myself to learn how to appreciate the place I’m in and enjoy the moment, but I haven’t been able to accomplish that. Oliver Burkeman, in Four Thousand Weeks, writes about how much of life is spent chasing an imagined future—how we’re always postponing satisfaction until later. Maybe that’s what I’m doing, treating contentment as something that exists elsewhere, in some other version of me, instead of right here.
You can watch the video of our trip if you have no desire to continue reading. But then you will miss my attempt at writing a poem.
While I was in Grand Lake, I tried to feel what I imagine one of my favorite poets, Gary Snyder, would have felt. I had recently watched a doc about him — O Mother Gaia: The World of Gary Snyder. 95 this year, still writing, still carrying the mountain in his pocket. If you don’t know anaything about him, here’s an intro article from the Anarchist Studies blog: https://anarchiststudies.noblogs.org/article-buddhism-and-anarchism-reflections-on-the-eco-anarchism-of-gary-snyder/
I even dared to put together a little poem in his style — relaxed casual meter, Zen mindfulness, precision and economy. Though really, it’s as much an homage to a great poet as my dancing The Nutcracker would be an homage to Nureyev. Still, here it is:
Up here in Grand Lake—
the air’s thin, hard to pull in,
like the mountains telling you to slow down.
August nights bite with cold, mosquitoes rise
in hungry clouds the moment you dare stand still
and a brown bear steps into the road
claws clicking on asphalt, stopping traffic.
Cars wait. Nobody honks.
A hawk circles overhead, calling once.
The pines and aspens smell of distant lands,
And it’s time to wind this poem down.
Snyder would’ve probably said it all in
three lines, left the rest to silence, and
gone off to split firewood.
This is one of Gary Snyder’s most known poems:
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‘Til next time.
ak