This is from a selected volume of poems
called "No Nature" that has the advantage--
has the advantage of an index, which is a good thing.
I'm going to finish up with one more little poem
from this selection.
Ripples on the surface.
I was out in Sitka Sound in Southeast Alaska
with some Native American people fishing for silver salmon.
These were plenty of people.
But you know, they're not native American people exactly,
they're working people and fishermen
and others is what they are.
So actually talking about Native Americans this
isn't what they want to talk about.
They want to talk about practical things.
So we were watching what was going
on the surface of the water.
And one of the women said to me, so I
start with a quote from her.
Ripples on the surface of the water
are silver salmon crossing under different
from the ripples caused by breezes.
A skudding plume on a wave.
A humpback whale is breaking out in air gulping Herring.
Nature wrote a book but a performance a high old culture.
Ever-fresh events scraped out, rubbed out, and used.
Used again, the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass.
The vast wild, the little house alone.
The little house in the wild.
The wild in the house both forgotten.
No nature.
Both together one big empty house.