Know-Not
Know-Not
Gary Snyder recollects a time when he was in his truck “heading for know-not”1 and today I am his poetry passenger. For seventeen years I was a driver, the maker of my own career. Today I have at least seventy eight bug bites on my legs and arms after shoveling 8 cubic yards of topsoil into our greenhouse, which, as of now, is only a brownhouse. Some day plants will rise from this dirt, but when? I know-not.
At the pace of walking, which might be the pace of sprouting, I hope to arrive at the precise time know-not becomes home. I will know-it not because the choreographed rhythms of the greenhouse have produced food to feed a family, but because the Apache Plume, which is not only a white flower, but a fashionista wearing a willowy red headdress, will both dance and shake. And when it blooms I dance and shake with her.
Maybe I am home, then, rooted, maybe, because the Apache Plume already called to me from the ledge of the canyon before I even know what name to call it back, before it donned the flashy red feathers. And from the precipice, looking down, or maybe out, the Apache Plume and I see a river that looks still but sounds alive, and where this home might take us is the only journey we know:
Heading for know-not.
From his poem, Finding the Space in the Heart.