NEEDLING

Making the big move... that little piece of land, you know the one I’m talking about, that one piece of little plot that I could call my own... by the river bed oh lord, oh lord tell me, tell me what if by the river, I got me a some place I could call my home? What if then? What would I do with all this time down by the river on this place I could call my own?


Here’s a poem by Robinson Jeffers, a poem I seem to keep coming back to from this book I own:

HANDS

Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, no more,
No other picture. There’s no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intended
Religion or magic, or made their tracings
In the idleness of art; but over the division of years these careful
Signs-manual are now like a sealed message
Saying: “Look: we also were humans; we had hands, not paws. All hail
You people with the cleverer hands, our supplanters
In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her beauty, and come down
And be supplanted; for you also are human.”