Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse Book

Some of my favorite poems from this collection include the following:

We are constantly looking for something to satisfy us, to be "awed by some new gee-gaw". Budbill, like Wendell Berry, notes that beauty and fulfillment are within grasp where we are in place, that we don't have to set out on a long voyage to find something to make us happy. It may be right in our backyard.

"An Unassuming Grandeur"

On the other hand, I have a fondness for this place,
an attachment to the climate, the hardship, and the difficulty,

and there is solitude here and quiet,
a kind of modesty in the landscape,

an unassuming grandeur.

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p. 41)

As always, Budbill looks to the earth's rhythms to help tune the instruments of heart and mind.

"The Cycle of the Seasons"

The cycle of the seasons is to teach us to prepare
for our own deaths.

We get to practice every year, especially in the fall.
I've had fifty-eight practice sessions now.

But I'm not getting anywhere.
I can't seem to get it.

The more I practice, the older I get,
the less I want to die.

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p. 66)

Not content to go-with-the-flow of popular opinion, Budbill, like Wendell Berry, is willing to risk being seen as a contrarian.

"My Fate Is to Rebel"

If you say yes,
I'll say no.

If poetry is this,
I'll write not-this.

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p. 72)

Keep it simple . . . Beauty and wisdom is often profoundly common and ordinary.

"Note to Myself"

Never be deliberately obscure.
Life is difficult enough!
Don't add to the confusion.

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p. 75)

Budbill is willing to playfully toy with the inner voices that pull and tug at the affections of our heart, but does so wistfully so as to help us see where the tension lies in our being.

"Dilemma"

I want to be
famous
so I can be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
when I am
stuck
in this
obscurity?

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p.49)

And finally, Budbill categorizes some of life's basic principles under three headings which wrangle with the tension between "community" versus the "individual"; an element versus the echosphere in which the element is contained; me versus us.

"The Three Goals"

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

(David Budbill, "Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse", Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1999, p. 23)