Gary Snyder: "For All"

Ah to be alive
              on a mid-September morn
              fording a stream
              barefoot, pants rolled up,
              holding boots, pack on,
              sunshine, ice in the shallows,
              northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
             cold nose dripping
             singing inside
             creek music, heart music,
             smell of sun on gravel.

             I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
             of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
             one ecosystem
             in diversity
             under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.



"For All" by Gary Snyder. Text as published in The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry and Translations, 1952-1998 (Volume I, Counterpoint, 1999).  

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.