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    While We've Still Got Feet
    While We've Still Got Feet
    While We've Still Got Feet
    Ebook159 pages56 minutes

    While We've Still Got Feet

    By David Budbill

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    - Budbill is very popular on NPR's Writer's Almanac, and Garrison Keillor has read his poems two dozen times - A continuation of the mountain hermit schtick from Moment to Moment--a schtick that clearly resonnates with readers as MTM is now in its fifth printing - If you love him, you love him. Booklist does. They selected Moment to Moment as one of the "Ten Best Books of the Year" - We receive more mail about Budbill than any other poet we publish
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopper Canyon Press
    Release dateDec 4, 2012
    ISBN9781619320611
    While We've Still Got Feet
    Author

    David Budbill

    David Budbill (1940–2016) is the author of eight books of poems, seven plays, two novels, a collection of short stories, two picture books for children, and the libretto for an opera. He also served as an occasional commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He is well known for his play Judevine, which is centered on the lives of people who live in a fictional Vermont town—a place of great beauty and sometimes tough living. His honors include an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from New England College, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. David lived a humble, engaged, and passionate life in the green mountains of Vermont with his wife of 50 years, the painter Lois Eby.

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    Reviews for While We've Still Got Feet

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      Very plain spoken stuff, satisfying in the manner of spending an afternoon with an old friend who is , at turns, clever, melancholy, self-depracating, and keeps hitting the nail on the head.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. This is a collection of superb poems written in the style of Han Shan (Cold Mountain), Ryokan, and the Mountains and Rivers greats of Chinese classic mountain / Zen poets, this really is treasure. I'm eagerly now reading David Budbill's other 'mountain hermit' books. Equally recommended!

    Book preview

    While We've Still Got Feet - David Budbill

    Part One

    Gama Sennin

    Gut hangin’ out.

    Stick on shoulder.

    Toad up on me

    head.

    Singin’ me songs

    on Red Dust Road,

    headed toward

    dead.

    Thirty-five Years

    Thirty-five years ago I came into this place to live

    a simple life, to try to find out who I am.

    Thirty-five years in these remote and lonesome hills.

    Just mountains, trees, and sky, a poor farm here and there.

    Thirty-five years of watching seasons come and go.

    Thirty-five years gone by. Thirty-five years closer to oblivion.

    Drink a Cup of Loneliness

    Looking for a place to hide?

    Judevine Mountain will keep

    you safe. Here’s the place to

    lose yourself and forget about

    the world. Just wind through

    pines and the sound of rain.

    The longer you stay, the more

    withdrawn you get, the better

    you’ll like it here. Drink a cup

    of loneliness, and see what I

    mean. There’s a gray-haired

    guy up there who spends his

    days playing flutes and writing

    poems. He can tell you more.

    Thirty-five Miles to a Traffic Light

    From here it’s five miles to the blacktop,

    thirty-five in any direction of the compass

    to a traffic light. People say it’s way out there.

    I say, yes sirree. Far out, man, say I. Far out

    is what it is. Just snow and cold and isolation

    and nobody to see for days and days. People get

    scared by so much emptiness. So much silence

    is frightening. Better not come here if you

    don’t want to fall in upon yourself. Better yet,

    better not come here at all.

    In the Tradition

    For thousands of years, this urge to go away

    into the quiet, to sit down and listen for that

    still small voice whispering from within.

    In the fourth century C.E. T’ao Yüan-ming said,

    I built my hut among mankind but hear

    no sound of cart or horse.

    Four hundred years later Han Shan,

    for the same reason, said, The Cold Mountain road

    is strange, no tracks of cart or horse.

    Seven hundred years after that, Han Shan Te-ch’ing

    again built a tiny hut perfectly secluded beyond the sound

    of cart or horse or sign of human tracks.

    Another five hundred years later and here I am

    on Judevine Mountain, still hoping to hear

    that still small voice and saying,

    Down in the valley big trucks shift down and whine

    through the village. But up here on the mountain

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