I have always loved you,
Gary Snyder, loved your
poems. Although I was
a city girl, my heart
has long rested by a lake
with stars moving slowly
in the camera’s lens.
While my body grew up
in the city, my heart
was rooted in the small
gravel of that shore, and in
the grove of maples where
one wintry weekend I tented
in snow, blanketing my own
warmth into the canvas cave.
It warmed me through cold
winters huddled in the stone
boxes of city walls
It warms me still.
If I had seen
the Canyon then, perhaps
I would have known your poems
were real, perhaps my feet
would have held fast
against returning. Perhaps
I would have lived
in a cleft, my long roots
spread tendril-thin inside
the rock, my leaves
clenched and hardened
hoarding water, precious
water and the love
of this dark sun-blind center
of the Earth.
is a writer, teacher, advocate for environmental justice and peace, and member of the Poetry Caravan. She taught literature and writing at Pace University for many years and has taught poetry workshops at the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center and in the Brenda Connor-Bey Learning to See program. Her poems have appeared in Westchester Review, Third Wednesday, Red River Review, Earth’s Daughters, Inkwell, Commonweal, the Poetry Caravan anthology (en)compass, and in the 5th and 6th editions of McGraw-Hill’s textbook, Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama, among other venues.