The Best Thing You Can Do For

Clambering Up The Cold Mountain Path, The Cold Mountain Trail Goes On And On: The Long Gorge Choked With Scree And Boulders, The Wide Creek, The Mist-blurred Grass. The Moss Is Slippery, Though There's Been No Rain The Pine Sings, But There's No Wind. Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among The White Clouds?

Lay Down These Words Before Your Mind Like Rocks. Placed Solid, By Hands In Choice Of Place, Set Before The Body Of The Mind In Space And Time: Solidity Of Bark, Leaf, Or Wall Riprap Of Things: Cobble Of Milky Way. Straying Planets, These Poems, People, Lost Ponies With Dragging Saddles -- And Rocky Sure-foot Trails. The Worlds Like An Endless Four-dimensional Game Of Go. Ants And Pebbles In The Thin Loam, Each Rock A Word A Creek-washed Stone Granite: Ingrained With Torment Of Fire And Weight Crystal And Sediment Linked Hot All Change, In Thoughts, As Well As Things.

You Run Into People Who Want To Write Poetry Who Don't Want To Read Anything In The Tradition. That's Like Wanting To Be A Builder But Not Finding Out What Different Kinds Of Wood You Use.

I See A Vision Of A Great Rucksack Revolution Thousands Or Even Millions Of Young Americans Wandering Around With Rucksacks, Going Up To Mountains To Pray, Making Children Laugh And Old Men Glad, Making Young Girls Happy And Old Girls Happier, All Of 'em Zen Lunatics Who Go About Writing Poems That Happen To Appear In Their Heads For No Reason And Also By Being Kind And Also By Strange Unexpected Acts Keep Giving Visions Of Eternal Freedom To Everybody And To All Living Creatures.

Streams And Mountains Never Stay The Same.