Four Poems for Robin

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron

All night blossoms fell

Shivering on a sheet of cardboard

Feet stuck in my pack

Hands deep in my pockets

Barely able to sleep.

I remembered when we were in school

Sleeping together in a big warm bed

We were the youngest lovers

When we broke up we were still nineteen.

Now our friends are married

You teach school back east

I dont mind living this way

Green hills the long blue beach

But sometimes sleeping in the open

I think back when I had you.

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May

We walked under cherry blossoms

At night in an orchard in Oregon.

All that I wanted then

Is forgotten now, but you.

Here in the night

In a garden of the old capital

I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao

I remember your cool body

Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,

Breath smoking in the moonlight,

Bitter memory like vomit

Choked my throat.

I unrolled a sleeping bag

On mats on the porch

Under thick autumn stars.

In dream you appeared

(Three times in nine years)

Wild, cold, and accusing.

I woke shamed and angry:

The pointless wars of the heart.

Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.

The first time I have

Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,

In the tall dry grass by the orchard

When you chose to be free,

“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you

One time. You were strange.

And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have

Gone by: I’ve always known

where you were—

I might have gone to you

Hoping to win your love back.

You still are single.

I didn’t.

I thought I must make it alone. I

Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,

Does the grave, awed intensity

Of our young love

Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others

All crave and seek for;

We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had

Lived many lives.

And may never now know

If I am a fool

Or have done what my

karma demands.

Copyright Credit: Gary Snyder, “Four Poems for Robin” from The Back Country. Copyright © 1968 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)