– for Gary Snyder Let me say these words now, in the light, before you go – Wind across the North Cascades is unbearably quiet this morning I never hitchhiked a thousand miles of summer highway, put up hay, painted a boat, never stood beside footstones in a garden near Kyoto, but I have seen axe handles swim wide rivers that couldn’t be crossed, but the handles didn’t know they couldn’t swim, so they did, swimming on words – big ones, small ones – words so full of their own truth I couldn’t help but believe
Sam Rasnake is the author of the poetry collections World within the World (Cyberwit, 2020), Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press, 2013), and the chapbook Inside a Broken Clock (Finishing Line Press, 2010). He has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley, and was the managing editor for Blue Fifth Review (2000-2018). He may be found at www.facebook.com/sam.rasnake/ and twitter.com/SamRasnake.