Why I Take Good Care of my Macintosh
Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon,
Because it jumps like a skittish horse and sometimes throws me,
Because it is pokey when cold,
Because plastic is a sad strong material that is charming to rodents,
Because it is flighty,
Because my mind flies into it through my fingers,
Because it leaps forward and backward, is an endless sniffer and searcher,
Because its keys click like hail on a bolder,
And it winks when it goes out,
And puts word-heaps into hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders
in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
And I lose them and find them again,
Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,”
so it teaches of impermanence and pain;
And because my computer and me are both brief in the world,
both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
Because I have let it move in with me right in the tent,
And it goes with me out every morning;
We fill up our baskets, get back home,
Feel rich, relax,
I throw it a scrap and it hums.
by Gary Snyder
from This Present Moment
Counterpoint Press, Berkly CA, 2015