Wobbly Rock

for Gary Snyder “I think I’ll be the Buddha of this place” and sat himself down 1. It’s a real rock (believe this first) Resting on actual sand at the surf’s edge: Muir Beach, California (like everything else I have somebody showed it to me and I found it by myself) Hard common stone Size of the largest haystack It moves when hit by waves Actually shudders (even a good gust of wind will do it if you sit real still and keep your mouth shut) Notched to certain center it Yields and then comes back to it: Wobbly tons 2. Sitting here you look below to other rocks Precisely placed as rocks of Ryoanji: Foam like swept stones (the mind getting it all confused again: “snow like frosting on a cake” “rose so beautiful it don’t look real”) Isn’t there a clear example here Stone garden shown to me by Berkeley painter I never met A thousand books and somebody else’s boatride ROCKS (garden) EYE (nearly empty despite this clutter-image all the opposites cancelling out a CIRCULAR process:Frosting-snow) Or think of the monks who made it 4 hundred 50 years ago Lugged the boulders from the sea Swept to foam original gravelstone from sea (first saw it, even then, when finally they all looked up the instant AFTER it was made) And now all rocks are different and All the spaces in between (which includes about everything) The instant After it is made 3. I have been in many shapes before I attained congenial form All those years on the beach, lifetimes . . . When I was a boy I used to watch the Pelican: It always seemed his wings broke And he dropped, like scissors, in the sea . . . Night fire flicking the shale cliff Balls tight as a cat after the cold swim Her young snatch sandy . . . I have travelled I have made a circuit I have lived in 14 cities I have been a word in a book I have been a book originally Dychymig Dychymig:(riddle me a riddle) Waves and the sea. If you take away the sea Tell me what it is 4. Yesterday the weather was nice there were lots of people Today it rains, the only other figure is far up the beach (by the curve of his body I know he leans against the tug of his fishingline: there is no separation) Yesterday they gathered and broke gathered and broke like Feeding swallows dipped down to pick up something ran back to Show it And a young girl with jeans rolled to mid-thigh ran Splashing in the rain creek “They’re all so damned happy— why can’t they admit it?” Easy enough until a little rain shuts beaches down . . . Did it mean nothing to you Animal that turns this Planet to a smoky rock? Back among your quarrels How can I remind you of your gentleness? Jeans are washed Shells all lost or broken Driftwood sits in shadow boxes on a tracthouse wall Like swallows you were, gathering Like people I wish for . . . cannot even tell this to that fisherman 5. 3 of us in a boat the size of a bathtub   .   pitching in slow waves   .   fish poles over the side   .   oars We rounded a point of rock and entered a small cove Below us: fronds of kelp fish crustaceans eels Then us then rocks at the cliff’s base starfish (hundreds of them sunning themselves) final starfish on the highest rock then Cliff 4 feet up the cliff a flower grass further up more grass grass over the cliff’s edge branch of pine then Far up the sky a hawk Clutching to our chip we are jittering in a spectrum Hung in the film of this narrow band Green to our eyes only 6. On a trail not far from here Walking in meditation We entered a dark grove And I lost all separation in step with the Eucalyptus as the trail walked back beneath me Does it need to be that dark or is Darkness only its occasion Finding it by ourselves knowing Of course Somebody else was there before . . . I like playing that game Standing on a high rock looking way out over it all: “I think I’ll call it the Pacific” Wind water Wave rock Sea sand (there is no separation) Wind that wets my lips is salt Sea breaking within me balanced as the Sea that floods these rocks. Rock Returning to the sea, easily, as Sea once rose from it. It Is a sea rock (easily) I am Rocked by the sea