For the Children
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 togetherlearn the flowersgo light
Gary Snyder is a poet, essayist, and watershed activist. His most recent books are No Nature (new and selected poems) and A Place in Space (new and selected prose). He teaches occasionally at the University of California at Davis and lives in the northern California Sierra in a mixed community of pines, foresters, chaparral, carpenters, oaks, and naturalists.
Footnotes
* From Gary Snyder, Turtle Island (New York: New Directions, 1974). Copyright © 1974 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted with permission of New Directions Pub. Corp.
Other works by Gary Snyder appearing in this issue of Literature and Medicine:
• The Blue Sky
