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
