Gary Snyder - Old Woodrat's Stinky House
Us critters hanging out together
something like three billion years
Three hundred something million years
the solar system swings around
With all the milky way
Ice ages come one hundred fifty million years apart
last about 10 million
then warmer days return
A venerable desert
woodrat nest of twigs and shreds
plastered down with ambered urine
A family house in use 8000 thousand years,
and four thousand years of using writing equals
the life of a bristlecone pine -
A spoken language works
for about five centuries,
Lifespan of a douglas fir;
big floods, big fires, every couple hundred years
a human life lasts eighty,
a generation twenty.
Hot summers every eight or ten,
four seasons every year
twenty-eight days for the moon
day/night the twenty-four hours
and a song lasts four minutes
a breath is a breath
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