"Bees and busy people."

Been reading the great & strange Philip Whalen lately, & encountered this gem on nature's simultaneities, which can best be enjoyed for its crackling sound effects & pools of meaning by reading aloud:

FOR ALBERT SAIJO

Fireweed now—
Burnt mountain day
Sunny crackle silence bracken
Huckleberry silver logs bears
Bees and busy people.

Rainy mountain years
Trees again—
Green gloom fern here
Moss duff sorrel
Deer sleep.

Tree fire people weed:
Bright and dark this mountain ground.


by Philip Whalen
(Zen poet &—can you tell?—college roommate of Gary Snyder)

Bonus Track: Whalen (center) with friends Ginsberg & Burroughs, way back when.