Poet du Jour: Gary Snyder

I struggle with writing poetry because what I read by others touches that thing deep within me that I myself have trouble bringing forth. Case in point, Gary Snyder's "I Went to a Maverick Bar" from his Pultizer Prize Winning collection Turtle Island (1974). I could pick many fo Snyder's poems and share them (and I think I have already posted a few...), but today I'd like to share just the last two stanzas from "Maverick":

They held each other like in High School dances
in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
“What is to be done.”

Just what is "the real work" Snyder returns to? How important is it that we, like he, return to ourselves first to identify that "real work" is?

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!