Letter to Snyder from Montana - Richard Hugo

Dear Gary: As soon as you’d gone winter snapped shut again

on Missoula. Right now snow from the east and last night

cold enough to arrest the melting of ice. My favorite

bouncer, wind, stopped throwing clouds out of the joint for being

too gloomy. In short, you’re gone and we’ve gone back to being

a small dreary city. Some of your grace hangs on. I still

have a date with that round pink girl. For her I have evil plans.

I am rubbing my hands like a monster. I am planning trips

to remote lakes in spring. I know it’s not modern to think

of seduction as evil, but damn it that makes it more fun

and the more fun it is the more often I’ll do it, I hope.

Students still buzz about your reading. Those who had turned you

into a god were happy to find you human. I should

have warned them. Should have also warned all western Montana,

a warm force in coming. Snows will run off. The rivers

will scream and crack their banks. Winter will take a breather.

Speaking of love being fun, you never in your remarks

mentioned those two minute male orgasms perfected

in India by, if I have it right, the mystics. Why not?

Nor did you bring up those ancient Chinese techniques

or tortuous titillation. Remember, forests and land

(for me especially, fish) are not all that’s worth saving.

There’s also loving. Shit. Why tell you? You preserve that

every day without trying. But of course you’re not here.

Last night, 20 below. A mass of tall arctic air

stands over us like a cruel father, though the weather now

is really a mother and this mother may go on forever.

What it needs, what we need, I, is another visit

from Snyder. For that, the glaciers are waiting, and bears

(for you especially, fish) and the green flaring pageant

of sky mating with hills. This letter was found wadded up

in a bum in the tundra who sends his warmest regards. Dick

over their behinds, and a friendly bar, a table where

we can talk. Think about it. Say yes. Be nice. Love. Dick.