Gary Snyder


Beneath My Hand And Eye The Dis­tant Hills, Your Body

What my hand fol­lows on your body
Is the line. A stream of love
of heat, of light, what my
eye las­civ­i­ous
licks
over watch­ing
far snow-dappled Uin­tah moun­tains
Is that stream
Of power. what my
hand curves over, fol­low­ing the line.
"hip" and "groin"
Where "I"
fol­low by hand and eye
the swim­ming limit of your body.
As when vision idly dal­lies on the hills
Lov­ing what it feeds on.
soft cin­der cones and craters;
-Drum Hadley in the Pinacate
took ten min­utes more to look again-
A leap of power unfurl­ing:
left, right-right-
My heart beat faster look­ing
at the snowy Uin­tah Moun­tains.
What "is" within not know
but feel it
sink­ing with a breath
pusht ruth­less, surely, down.
Beneath this long caress of hand and eye
"we" learn the flow­er­ing burn­ing,
out­ward, from "below".
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