Awake.

At the far end of a trip north

In a berry-pickers cabin

At the edge of a wide muddy field

Stretching to the woods and cloudy mountains,

Feeding the stove all afternoon with cedar,

Watching the dark sky darken, a heron flap by,

A huge setter pup nap on the dusty cot.

High rotten stumps in the second-growth woods

Flat scattered farms in the bends of the Nooksack

River. Steelhead run now

a week and I go back

Down 99, through towns, to San Francisco and Japan.

All America south and east,

Twenty-five years in it brought to a trip-stop

Mind-point, where I turn

Caught more on this land rock tree and man,

Awake, than ever before, yet ready to leave.

damned memories,

Whole wasted theories, failures and worse success,

Schools, girls, deals, try to get in

To make this poem a froth, a pity.

A dead fiddle for lost good jobs.

the cedar walls

Smell of our farm-house, half built in '35.

Clouds sink down the hills

Coffee is hot again. The dog

Turns and turns about, stops and sleeps.

Gary Snyder