The Morning Reading: "stay together"

Photo appears on the back cover of his collection Turtle Island (published in 1974).

 
For the Children
by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light 

Gary Snyder in 2010. Photo by Jim Davis for the Boston Globe.

  Gary Snyder, born on this day May 8, in 1930.