what will we remember, bodies thick with food and lovers, after 20 years

i admittedly spent about 2 hours wednesday afternoon convinced that internally cataloging every gary snyder sex poem was a worthwhile and urgently necessary project, which c.b. says, perhaps rightfully, is definite proof that i’m more than due to get my ass out of denali and i think has something to do with my inability to write sex poems of my own that don’t turn into disorganized rambling about flies crawling up a window (this happened. both the poem and the flies. repeatedly. i tried to frame it as a metaphor for seasonal stagnation but it didn’t work and i threw it away. the poem, not the flies. or the window. but the window did eventually get thrown away, though not because of the flies and not by me). i also think it’s important to mention that d.h. recently responded in a facebook message with the observation that “maybe it’s more important whether you’re sleeping with someone or not in alaska than in colorado, would you agree?” to the question of whether or not he was, and i was too intrigued by the thought to ever bother replying. but anyway, soon i just gave up and read 2 whole books, sex poems or not.
this one’s not, exactly:

Another for the Same

a cut reed floating
a sort of Lady Komachi
wiser than me
the best of your beauty

always hidden, yû

“a glow of red leaves in dark woods”
in your gray eyes.
look at me stranger
I’ve been hungry, alone, cold,
but not lonely
must I be lonely with you?
Danae to sunlight, starlight,
wind, snuffing it on every
high hill
of the mind.

you really are going nowhere
I wish I was going with you.
to rock, to space
–I cannot shake this love of mine
which is so much less
than yours.

(in The Back Country, “Kali”)
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p.s.–gary, if you google yourself and find me…please write. but i somehow don’t think you google yourself.
p.p.s.–everyone, i ate so much damn pie tonight i’ll never get to sleep.