"Axe Handles" by Gary Snyder

One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's We Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature" - in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.

"John Muir on Mt. Ritter" by Gary Snyder

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

"My Hometown" (Whiskeytown)

On back down in my hometown

Everybody's feelin' it bad

No new breaks, whatever it takes

Not to have to sway it on a classified ad



Hey there Ma and Pa here I am

Money's running out all the same

I just close my eyes and bring it on home again



Up real late in New York state

Talkin' to my baby at night

She keeps me warm and protects me from harm

Love just keeps on rollin' when the money gets tight



Hey there Ma and Pa where I am

Money's running out all the same

I just close my eyes and bring it on home again



Oh Mrs. Memory just take me on down

Back to the shanties and the cars by the lake

Oh Mrs. Memory just take me on back

Back to my baby and make it okay

Yeah just make it okay



On back down in my hometown

Everybody's feelin' the same

Good money spent on keepin' the rent

Sent in to the man under a week late



Hey there Ma and Pa were I am

Money's running out all the same

I just close my eyes and bring it on home again

I just close my eyes and bring it on home again

"Heaven of My Heart" (Jim White)

"Heaven of My Heart"

By Mike Pratt and Jim White

Radio song, playing in the car, don't even know where we are...

don't know the time of day or the color of the clothes I'm wearing.

Would you look at that sky, pretty little stars twinkling far above in heaven

sorta makes me feel like dancing, right here in the moonlight.

But this little girl, well she's so shy,

she won't even look up, into the sky... ..

At the shiny stars, guiding stars pointing the way to the heaven of my heart...

guiding stars pointing the way to the heaven of my,

the heaven of my heart.

Got a funny-bone, laugh like a mule, always did pretty good in school

but still I cannot decipher her arithmetic.

Cause I'd walk to the moon, I'd lick a spittoon,

I'd wear wooly underwear in a sauna,

just to show her how much I wanna be her loveable lunatic.

But she's so demure, that it's no surprise

when I tell her I love her, well she just closes her eyes... .

To the shiny stars, guiding stars pointing the way to the heaven of my heart...

guiding stars pointing the way to the heaven of my, the heaven of my heart.

Yes she's a brainy girl, that is good. She's smarter than me but then so is wood,

but that don't mean I should submit to her authority...

'cause I wanna make her laugh, I wanna make her sing,

but she won't do a doggone thing, and don'tcha know

when she don't it makes her even more adorable.

I guess that's why, it's the way she fights me... .

it makes them stars burn extra brightly

Them shiny stars, guiding star pointing the way to the heaven of my heart,

guiding stars pointing the way to the heaven of my heart ETC.