Buddhas and Beats on the Hillside

[Brownlie]

This poem began a month ago as I walked the hillsides behind my in-laws place in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It seemed to me that some of the rocks were escaping the summer heat by resting in the shade. Also, lately I've been reading a lot of Gary Snyder's meditations on mountains and rivers. So those have an influence here as well.



Buddhas and Beats on the Hillside

Content upon his place of rest
in the garden of the golden eternal. --Did you mean to have a period here.
Sun heating the grasses through in waves
across the quieted clearings. -- Quieted?


Long ago he came to this spot.
Found the exposure to suit his temperament.
Built a home for a seed to grow,
so that he could have shade from summer's fury. -- Fury changes the tone and it personifies nature. I think. Summer may need to be capitalized.

One hand with upturned palm
holding soil and oak seedlings.
Three spirits condensed in rock and earth and tree. -- What spirits?
Solid, sifted through, and alive.

Old bones ground to dust in this handcraft mortar.
Minerals of the cosmos slowly released
from comets connecting with the surface.
Vibrations being sent throughout the land.

Millennia in the sand and rain.
Slowly this granite decomposes,
turning to grains both course and fine.
Mixing the soil and becoming the hill anew.

Taken up by grasses and flowers.
Become pollen or seeds carried by the wind.
Or washed along in the runoff,
only to sprout further downstream. -- The movement of nature seems ok.

Born again a thousand times over.
Until worn away enough
to be covered over lightly embedded.
Returned to the earth once more.

Turn the wheel.
Hum the message.
Offer the prayer.
And sustain the flow.

Happy, well rested medicine Buddha.
Fat and smiling satisfied in the shade.
Sitting still at 1,000 miles an hour,
as this planetary foundation spins forever round.

His tea leaves steep among these rolling slopes.
Trees, grasses, and flowers let go.
Give off steam as the pressures subside.
Release their intertwined earthbound holds.

I'm not sure who the subject of the poem is, which makes it confusing for me. I could be missing it. If not, that seems like an important matter to fix if you want to revise this. Maybe the subject was Buddha? Not the best critique here.