More rain from the same sky as yesterday. The cherry blossoms seem to be drowning. We need some dry weather. The ground feels saturated. If it were to rain hard now we might be in trouble for land slides but that is just me worrying. The mossy ground is an even more squishy sponge if that could be possible. Our old sauna looks sad and overgrown in the rain. The storm two nights before blew over the red chairs and I haven’t set them right thinking that another one just might be on the way, but that might just be depressive laziness. I should check the weather. My friend Ernie the fisherman whose son just came back from fishing his black cod and who checks the weather every morning tells me it’s going to keep raining like this so I didn’t check. But I didn’t ask Ernie about the wind.

Today I recorded a rather long reading about Gary Snyder and I told some stories about him. I hope the tone was okay… and it didn’t sound arrogant on my part. “It was done out of love,” as Doc Ricketts said about Steinbeck…

and yes… I know that I punch above my weight as far as my literary friends and influences go. But why would I bother admiring and befriending slouches? I will write sometime soon about making literary friendships, essentially you have to give as good as you get and I think I have.

Anyway here is a poem I wrote for Snyder years ago. His birthday is coming up.

I hope you enjoy the recording.

RESPITE

for Gary-- on his birthday May 8, 2003

Spring comes

and on the porch our caged bird sings

to the crows perched

above him in the alders

while someone talks about the brown bear

being killed up the hill after he ate

the veterinarian’s old yellow dog

and the seniors in high school skip

their afternoon classes to drink warm beer

in their pick ups out past the turn-around.

I suppose I should be worried

but I can’t seem to muster the concern.

Let them all rest now:

the faithful old dog,

our vain yellow bird,

the dopey young bear,

and the highschool seniors.

Let them fold themselves up in this

promise the earth always keeps,

and let them rest

for this spring is brief

and those final tests

were never worth taking,

anyway.

More hard rain,

an old man walks his puppy,

being pulled along.

jhs