12.

A green limb hangs in the crotch
of a silver snag.
Above the Cats,
                    the skidders and thudding brush,
Hundreds of butterflies
Flit through the pines.
"You shall live in square
                    gray houses in a barren land
                    and beside those square gray
                    houses you shall starve."
—Drinkswater. Who saw a vision
At the high and lonely center of the earth:
Where Crazy Horse
                    went to watch the Morning Star,
& the four-legged people, the creeping people,
The standing people and the flying people
Know how to talk.
I ought to have eaten
Whale tongue with them.
                    they keep saying I used to be a human being
"He-at-whose-voice-the-Ravens-sit-on-the-sea."
Sea-foam washing the limpets and barnacles
Rattling the gravel beach
Salmon up creek, bear on the bank,
Wild ducks over the mountains weaving
In a long south flight, the land of
Sea and fir tree with the pine-dry
Sage-flat country to the east.
Han Shan could have lived here,
                    & no scissorbill stooge of the
                    Emperor would have come trying to steal
                    his last poor shred of sense.

On the wooded coast, eating oysters
Looking off toward China and Japan
"If you're gonna work these woods
Don't want nothing
That can't be left out in the rain—"