Waiting For A Ride

I recently mentioned Gary Snyder and his film with Jim Harrison, THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM.  I watched it again last night, first time I've seen it since I saw it on the big screen in New York City last November.  Damn, I do love that film for the energy/essence of Snyder it conveys.  I laughed out loud several times. One poem he read I particularly want to share with you:  "Waiting For A Ride"

You can hear Snyder read this poem by following this link Gary Snyder interview in Minnesota Public Radio  On this page, look on right side, under Audio, for Gary Snyder reads Waiting For A Ride.

And here's the text... but do listen to the meter of his voice reading his work.  It does make all the difference.

Standing at the baggage, passing time:
Austin, Texas, airport–my ride hasn’t come yet.
My former wife is making Web sites from her home,
one son’s seldom seen,
the other and his wife have a boy and girl of their own.
My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town
so she can get to high school.
My mother, ninety-six, still lives alone and she’s in town, too,
always gets her sanity back just barely in time.
My former former wife has become a unique poet;
most of my work,
such as it is       is done.
Full moon was October 2nd this year,
I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck,
white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine,
owl hoots and rattling antlers,
Castor and Pollux rising strong–
--it’s good to know that the polestar drifts!
That even our present night sky slips away;
not that I’ll see it.
Or maybe I will, much later,
some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,
that long walk of spirits–where you fall right back into the
“narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”
squeeze your little skull
and there you are again

waiting for your ride

–Gary Snyder