No Nature

Table Of Contents

PREFACE              
 
from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
       Riprap
                Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
                The Late Snow & Lumber Strike of the Summer of Fifty-four
                Piute Creek
                Milton by Firelight
                Above Pate Valley
                Water
                Hay for the Horses
                Thin Ice
                Nooksack Valley
                All through the Rains
                Migration of Birds
                Toji
                Kyoto: March
                The Sappa Creek
                Goofing Again
                Cartegena
                Riprap
 
       Cold Mountain Poems
                “The path to Han-shan’s place is laughable,”
                “In a tangle of cliffs I chose a place—”
                “In the mountains it’s cold.”
                “Men ask the way to Cold Mountain”
                “I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,”
                “Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,”
                “I have lived at Cold Mountain”
                “Spring-water in the green creek is clear”
                “In my first thirty years of life”
                “I can’t stand these bird-songs”
                “There’s a naked bug at Cold Mountain”
                “Cold Mountain is a house”
                “Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease—“
                “Some critic tried to put me down—“
                “I’ve lived at Cold Mountain—how many autumns.”
                “My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,”
                “When men see Han-shan”
 
from Myths & Texts
       Logging
                “The morning star is not a star”
                “But ye shall destroy their altars,”
                “ ‘Lodgepole Pine: the wonderful reproductive”
                “Pines, under pines,”
                “Felix Baran”
                “Ray Wells, a big Nisqually, and I”
                “Each dawn is clear”
                “A green limb hangs in the crotch”
                “The groves are down”
                “Lodgepole”

       Hunting
                the first shaman song
                this poem is for birds
                this poem is for bear
                this poem is for deer
                “Sealion, salmon, offshore—“
                “Flung from demonic wombs”
                “Now I’ll also tell what food:
                “How rare to be born a human being!”
 
       Burning
                second shaman song
                Maudgalyayana saw hell
                Maitreya the future Buddha
                “Face in the crook of her neck”
                John Muir on Mt. Ritter:
                Amitabha’s vow
                “Spikes of new smell driven up nostrils”
                “Stone-flake and salmon.”
                “ ‘Wash me on home, mama’ “
                the text
 
from Mountains and Rivers Without End
       Bubbs Creek Haircut
        
       The Blue Sky
 
from The Back Country
       Far West
                A Berry Feast
                Marin-an
                Sixth-Month Song in the Foothills
                The Spring
                A Walk
                Fire in the Hole
                Burning the Small Dead
                Foxtail Pine
                August on Sourdough, A Visit from Dick Brewer
                Oil
                Once Only
                After Work
                For the Boy Who Was Dodger Point Lookout Fifteen Years Ago
 
       Far East 
                Yase: September
                Pine River
                Vapor Trails
                The Public Bath
                A Volcano in Kyushu
                Four Poems for Robin
                The Firing
                Work to Do Toward Town
                Nansen
                Six Years
 
       Kāli
                For a Stone Girl at Sanchi
                North Beach Alba
                Could She See the Whole Real World with her Ghost Breast Eyes Shut Under a Blouse Lid?
                Night
                This Tokyo
                The Manichaens
                Mother of the Buddhas, Queen of Heaven, Mother of the Sun; Marici, Goddess of the Dawn
                On Our Way to Khajuraho
                Circumambulating Arunchala
                7: VII
                Nanao Knows
                The Truth Like the Belly of a Woman Turning
                For John Chappell
                Go Round
 
       Back
                The Old Dutch Woman
                For the West
                7. IV
                Twelve Hours Out of New York After Twenty-Five Days at Sea
                Across Lamarck Col
                Hop, Skip, and Jump
                Beneath My Hand and Eye the Distant Hills, Your Body
                Through the Smoke Hole
 
from Regarding Wave
                Wave
                In the House of the Rising Sun
                Song of the Tangle
                Song of the Slip
                Song of the Taste
                Kyoto Born in Spring Song
                Burning Island
                Roots
                Rainbow Body
                Everybody Lying on Their Stomachs, Head Toward the Candle, Reading, Sleeping, Drawing
                Shark Meat
                The Bed in the Sky
                Kai, Today
                Not Leaving the House
                Regarding Wave
                Revolution in the Revolution in the Revolution
                What You Should Know to Be a Poet
                Aged Tamba Temple Plum Tree Song
                It
                Running Water Music
                Sours of the Hills
                The Wild Edge
                The Trade
                To Fire                
                Love
                Meeting the Mountains
                Running Water Music II
                Long Hair
                Target Practice
 
from Turtle Island
       Manzanita
                Anasazi
                The Way West, Underground
                The Dead by the Side of the Road
                I Went into the Maverick Bar
                No Matter, Never Mind
                The Bath
                Spel Against Demons
                Front Lines
                Control Burn
                The Call of the Wild
                Prayer for the Great Family
                Manzanita
 
       Magpie’s Song
                The Real Work
                Pine Tree Tops
                For Nothing
                Night Herons
                The Egg
                By Frazier Creek Falls
                It Pleases
                Mother Earth: Her Whales
                Ethnobotany
                Straight-Creek—Great Burn
                Two Fawns That Didn’t See the Light This Spring
                Two Immortals
                Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen
                “One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter About What Is Forbidden by the Buddha”
                I. M F B R
               Magpie’s Song
 
       For the Children
                Gen
                Tomorrow’s Song
                What Happened Here Before
                Toward Climax
                Without
                For the Children
                As for Poets
 
from Axe Handles
       For/From Lew
 
       Loops
                Axe Handles
                River in the Valley
                Berry Territory
                The Cool Around the Fire
                Changing Diapers
                Painting the North San Juan School
                Fence Posts
                Look Back
                Soy Sauce
                Strategic Air Command
                Working on the ’58 Willys Pickup
                Getting in the Wood
                True Night
 
       Little Songs for Gaia
 
       Nets
                Three Deer One Coyote Running in the Snow
                24:IV:40075, 3:30 PM, n. of Coaldale, Nevada, A Glimpse through a Break in the Storm of the Summit of the White Mountains
                Talking Late with the Governor about the Budget
                “He Shot Arrows, But Not at Birds Perching”
                What Have I Learned
                Dillingham, Alaska, the Willow Tree Bar
                Removing the Plate of the Pump on the Hydraulic System of the Backhoe
                Uluru Wild Fig Song
                Old Rotting Tree Trunk Down
                Old Woman Nature
                The Canyon Wren
                For All
                                
from Left Out in the Rain
                Elk Trails
                Lines on a Carp
                A Sinecure for P. Whalen
                Message from Outside
                Under the Skin of It
                “dogs, sheep, cows, goats”
                Seaman’s Ditty
                Poem Left in Sourdough Mountain Lookout
                Late October Camping in the Sawtooths
                Point Reyes
                Makings
                Longitude 170⁰ West, Latitude 35⁰ North
                For Example
                Bomb Test
                Dullness in February: Japan
                The Feathered Robe
                On Vulture Peak
                Straits of Malacca 24 Oct 1957
                The Engine Room, S.S. Sappa Creek
                The North Coast
                One Year
                Three Poems for Joanne
                Crash
                Saying Farewell at the Monastery after Hearing the Old Master Lecture on “Return to the Source”
                Alabaster
                The Years
                No Shoes No Shirt No Service
                High Quality Information
                The Arts Council Meets in Eureka
                Arktos
                Fear Not
                We Make Our Vows Together with All Beings
                At White River Roadhouse in the Yukon
                The Persimmons
 
       Tiny Energies
 
       No Nature
                How Poetry Comes to Me
                On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn Again After Thirty-one Years
                Kusiwoqqobi
                The Sweat
                Building
                Surrounding by Wild Turkeys
                Off the Trail
                Word Basket Woman
                At Tower Peak
                Right in the Trail
                Travelling to the Capital
                Thoughts on Looking at a Samuel Palmer Etching at the Tate
                Kisiabaton
                For Lew Welch in a Snowfall
                Ripples on the Surface
 
                INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES