At high noon the sun always coming out at last, strong, beating down on my nice high porch where I sit with books and coffee and the noon I thought about the ancient Indians who must have inhabited this canyon for thousands of years, how even as far back as the 10th Century this valley must have looked the same, just different trees: these ancient Indians simply the ancestors of the Indians of only recently say 1860—How they’ve all died and quietly buried their grievances and excitements—How the creek may have been an inch deeper since logging operations of the last 60 years have removed some of the watershed in the hills back there—How the women pounded the local acorns, acorns or shmacorns, I finally found the natural nuts of the valley and they were sweet tasting—And men hunted deer—In fact God knows what they did because I wasnt here—But the same valley, a thousand years of dust more or less over their footsteps of 960 A.D.—And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words—We will pass just as quietly through life (passing through, passing through) as the 10th century people of this valley only with a little more noise and a few bridges and dams and bombs that wont even last a million years—The world being just what it is, moving and passing through, actually alright in the long view and nothing to complain about—Even the rocks of the valley had earlier rock ancestors, a billion billion years ago, have left no howl of complaint—Neither the bee, or the first sea urchins, or the clam, or the severed paw—All sad So-Is sight of the world, right there in front of my nose as I look,—And looking at that valley in fact I also realize I have to make lunch and it wont be any different than the lunch of those olden men and besides it'll taste good—Everything is the same, the fog says “We are fog and we fly by dissolving like ephemera,” and the leaves say “We are leaves and we jiggle in the wind, that’s all, we come and go, grow and fall”—Even the paper bags in my garbage pit say “We are man-transformed paper bags made out of wood pulp, we are kinda
