(a special thanks to poet Michael Dennis Browne for this exercise!)
Things to Do Around Seattle
- by Gary Snyder
Hear phone poles hum.
Catch garter snakes. Make lizard tails fall off.
Biking to Lake Washington, see muddy little fish.
Peeling old bark off Madrone to see the clean red new bark.
Cleaning fir pitch off your hands.
Reading books in the back of the University District goodwill.
Swimming in Puget Sound below the railroad tracks.
Dig clams.
Ride the Kalakala to Bremerton.
See Mt. Constance from the water tower up by the art museum.
Fudgsicles in Woodland park zoo, the Eagle and the Camel.
The mummy Eskimo baby in the University Anthropology museum.
Hung up deep sea canoes, red cedar log.
Eating old style oatmeal mush cookt in double boiler or cracked wheat cereal with dates.
Sway in the wind in the top of the cedar in the middle of the swamp--
Walking off through the swamp and over the ridge to the pine woods.
Picking wild blackberries all around stumps.
Peeling cascara
Feeding chickens
Feeling Penelope's udder, one teat small
Oregon grape and salal.
Assignment: Write your own Things to do Around _______ (campus, your hometown, the town we are in now, Uptown, the dorm, a place you vacationed, this classroom, your friend's house, etc.).
- by Gary Snyder
Hear phone poles hum.
Catch garter snakes. Make lizard tails fall off.
Biking to Lake Washington, see muddy little fish.
Peeling old bark off Madrone to see the clean red new bark.
Cleaning fir pitch off your hands.
Reading books in the back of the University District goodwill.
Swimming in Puget Sound below the railroad tracks.
Dig clams.
Ride the Kalakala to Bremerton.
See Mt. Constance from the water tower up by the art museum.
Fudgsicles in Woodland park zoo, the Eagle and the Camel.
The mummy Eskimo baby in the University Anthropology museum.
Hung up deep sea canoes, red cedar log.
Eating old style oatmeal mush cookt in double boiler or cracked wheat cereal with dates.
Sway in the wind in the top of the cedar in the middle of the swamp--
Walking off through the swamp and over the ridge to the pine woods.
Picking wild blackberries all around stumps.
Peeling cascara
Feeding chickens
Feeling Penelope's udder, one teat small
Oregon grape and salal.
Assignment: Write your own Things to do Around _______ (campus, your hometown, the town we are in now, Uptown, the dorm, a place you vacationed, this classroom, your friend's house, etc.).
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