Riprap recollected

for Gary Snyder

In those days you actually went looking
for a book in a bookstore
not knowing the title, the author’s name,
what the book was about for sure.

It was when you’d resigned to not finding
what you looked for that you found
this other you needed — and you realize
this years later, that wrong book —

you looked to it just this morning
this sense of a mountain in mind —
tree-line, bare granite beyond, and wind.

And now you’ve found shelter in a place
on that mountain’s lee side, knowing the name
for “stone laid on steep slick rock.” You make a path.