GARY SNYDER

"Hop, Skip, & Jump"

for Jim and Annie Hatch

     the curvd lines toe-drawn, round cornerd squares

bulge out doubles from its single pillar line, like,

Venus of the Stone Age.

she takes stone,

with a white quartz band for her lagger.

                                                            she

       takes a brown-stained salt sticky cigarette

                                               butt.

he takes a mussel shell. he takes a clamshell. she takes 

a stick.

he is tiny, with a flying run & leap

shaggy blond—misses all the markers,

                              tumbles from one foot.

                              they are dousing

a girl in a bikini down the beach

                      first with cold seawater

                        then with wine.

     double-leg single-leg stork stalk turn

on the end-square—hop, fork, hop, scoop the marker,

              we have all trippt and fallen.

              surf rough and full of kelp,

         all the ages—

draw a line on another stretch of sand—

                                               and—

                                           everybody try

to do the hop, skip, and jump.

                                                                    4. X. 1964 —Muir Beach