Poems to Live By

For All

by Gary Snyder

Ah to be alive
      on a mid-September morn
      fording a stream
      barefoot, pants rolled up,
      holding boots, pack on,
      sunshine, ice in the shallows,
      northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
      cold nose dripping
      singing inside
      creek music, heart music,
      smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
      of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
      one ecosystem
      in diversity
      under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with Turtle Island. A wise and remarkable work of poems and prose most of which is still relevant today in the 21st century.

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Gary Snyder is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, environmental activist and is often associated with the Beat Generation. He had a profound influence in bringing Buddhist spirituality to the west coast of the the U.S. His writing on nature and wilderness has inspired many contemporaries and multiple disciplines.