Monday Poems: "For All" - by Gary Snyder

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

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as 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,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
      one ecosystem
      in diversity
      under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

*     *     *     *     *     

Poet, essayist, environmental activist and voice for the Deep Ecology movement, Gary Snyder (b. 1930) has authored more than two dozen publications since the 1960s and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, among many other prestigious writing awards.

His work reflects his interest in Zen Buddhism, his identification as a member of the Beat Generation of writers, and the influence of a life lived in the American Northwest. "For All" is published in his Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection Turtle Island. 

His most recent works include The Etiquette of Freedom, a meditation on Earth-based consciousness that accompanies a documentary about his life — The Practice of the Wild, and the epic poem Mountains and Rivers Without End, published in 2008.