You Don't Want To Be

As A Poet I Hold The Most Archaic Values On Earth . . . The Fertility Of The Soil, The Magic Of Animals, The Power-vision In Solitude, The Terrifying Initiation And Rebirth, The Love And Ecstasy Of The Dance, The Common Work Of The Tribe. I Try To Hold Both History And The Wilderness In Mind, That My Poems May Approach The True Measure Of Things And Stand Against The Unbalance And Ignorance Of Our Times.

If, After Obtaining Buddhahood, Anyone In My Land Gets Tossed In Jail On A Vagrancy Rap, May I Not Attain Highest Perfect Enlightenment.

In The 40,000 Year Time Scale We're All The Same People. We're All Equally Primitive, Give Or Take Two Or Three Thousand Years Here Or A Hundred Years There.

You Should Really Know What The Complete Natural World Of Your Region Is And Know What All Its Interactions Are And How You Are Interacting With It Yourself. This Is Just Part Of The Work Of Becoming Who You Are, Where You Are.

For Those Who Can, One Of The Things To Do Is Not To Move. To Stay Put. That Doesn't Mean Don't Travel; It Means Have A Place And Get Involved In What Can Be Done In That Place. That's The Only Way We're Going To Have A Representative Democracy In America. Nobody Stays Anywhere Long Enough To Take Responsibility For A Local Community.