Lew Welch

I lived here nearly 5 years before I could
meet the middle western day with anything approaching
Dignity. It’s a place that lets you
understand why the Bible is the way it is:
Proud people cannot live here.

The land’s too flat. Ugly sullen and big it
pounds men down past humbleness. They
Stoop at 35 possibly cringing from the heavy and

Whenever I have a day off, I write a new poem.
Does this mean you shouldn’t work, or that you
write best on your day off?

For example, this is the poem I wrote today.


*


When he was 20, he understood some of the secrets of
life, and undertook to write them down so simply that
even an idiot could understand.

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed,
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

All these years I overlooked them in the
racket of the rest, this
symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding
on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air —
tiny acid-factories dissolving
salt from living rocks and
eating them.

Here they are, blooming!

for Gary Snyder

“I think I’ll be the Buddha of this place”

and sat himself
down


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