the text
Sourdough mountain called a fire in:
Up Thunder Creek, high on a ridge.
Hiked eighteen hours, finally found
A snag and a hundred feet around on fire:
All afternoon and into night
Digging the fire line
Falling the burning snag
It fanned sparks down like shooting stars
Over the dry woods, starting spot-fires
Flaring in wind up Skagit valley
From the Sound.
Toward morning it rained.
We slept in mud and ashes,
Woke at dawn, the fire was out,
the sky was clear, we saw
the last glimmer of morning star.
- Gary Snyder
from "NO NATURE". New & selected poems
Pantheon. (c) 1992 by Gary Snyder
photo: (c) 2009 BLT. "le gouffre de l'enfer".
