Common Places

A commonplace book is a place to keep scraps of your favorite poems, pressed flowers, what an old woman whispered to you on the bus, or dreams.
This is mine.

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

-Gary Snyder