Today the river is low enough to cross, stepping stone to stone, slippery green slime.
Clambering up a mountain’s ridge raising lowering easing down into a shady canyon
where bugs explore ears and nose, may be for a black hole that would return them to
those fabled times when

Snyder…emphasized how syncretic Ginsberg, Whalen, and he were in
the selection of chants for the initial circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais,
'some traditional Buddhist ones, some Hindu mantras…’

The gray monk's robe flakes off like old skin. Then, with neither compass nor GPS,
like Odysseus sailing from one myth to another, we're circling an uncharted world.

I remember this because self by self I've forgotten how it was to be so much more.

 

 

 

Mt. Tamalpais: Just north of San Francisco, CA., the 2571 Ft. mountain was home of the Coast Milwok People.
Snyder: D. Robertson, “The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais.” Western American Literature, Spring 1995.
The gray monk's robe: See, weishaus.unm.edu/Cosmography/Incognita/Incognita-8.htm
self by self: "Memory is the real name of...the affect on self by self." G. Deleuze. Foucault. Minneapolis, 1988.