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Best Famous Freeways Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Freeways poems. This is a select list of the best famous Freeways poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Freeways poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of freeways poems.

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Written by Gary Snyder | Create an image from this poem

At Tower Peak

At Tower Peak

 Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing
 Freeways are clogged all day
 Academies packed with scholars writing papers
 City people lean and dark
 This land most real 
 As its western-tending golden slopes
 And bird-entangled central valley swamps
 Sea-lion, urchin coasts
 Southerly salmon-probes 
 Into the aromatic almost-Mexican hills
 Along a range of granite peaks
 The names forgotten,
 An eastward running river that ends out in desert
 The chipping ground-squirrels in the tumbled blocks
 The gloss of glacier ghost on slab
 Where we wake refreshed from ten hours sleep
 After a long day's walking
 Packing burdens to the snow
 Wake to the same old world of no names,
 No things, new as ever, rock and water,
 Cool dawn birdcalls, high jet contrails.
 A day or two or million, breathing
 A few steps back from what goes down
 In the current realm.
 A kind of ice age, spreading, filling valleys
 Shaving soils, paving fields, you can walk in it
 Live in it, drive through it then 
 It melts away
 For whatever sprouts
 After the age of
 Frozen hearts. Flesh-carved rock
 And gusts on the summit,
 Smoke from forest fires is white,
 The haze above the distant valley like a dusk.
 It's just one world, this spine of rock and streams
 And snow, and the wash of gravels, silts
 Sands, bunchgrasses, saltbrush, bee-fields,
 Twenty million human people, downstream, here below.


Written by Adrienne Rich | Create an image from this poem

For the Record

 The clouds and the stars didn't wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings

intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred

Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds

so many depths of vomit, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose signature 
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.
Written by Gary Snyder | Create an image from this poem

Smoky the Bear Sutra

Smokey the Bear Sutra

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
 the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
 Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
 and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
 the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
 to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
 seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
 Enlightenment on the planet Earth. 

 "In some future time, there will be a continent called
 America. It will have great centers of power called
 such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
 Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
 such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
 The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
 its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
 its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature." 

 "The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
 of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
 My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
 granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
 future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
 the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
 and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it." 

 And he showed himself in his true form of 


SMOKEY THE BEAR 

•A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and
 watchful. 


•Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless
 attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; 


•His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display -- indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma; 


•Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a
 civilization that claims to save but often destroys; 


•Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through mountains -- 


•With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of
 those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind; 


•Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her; 


•Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the worms of capitalism and
 totalitarianism; 


•Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes;
 master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten
 trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash. 


Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will
 Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or
 slander him, 


HE WILL PUT THEM OUT. 

Thus his great Mantra: 


Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
 Sphataya hum traka ham nam 


"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
 BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED" 

And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
 Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
 people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children: 

 And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
 or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL: 


DROWN THEIR BUTTS
 CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
 DROWN THEIR BUTTS
 CRUSH THEIR BUTTS 

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out
 with his vajra-shovel. 

•Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada. 


•Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick. 


•Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature. 


•Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts. 


•Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at. 


•AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT. 

 thus have we heard. 


Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

The Whole Soul

 Is it long as a noodle 
or fat as an egg? Is it 
lumpy like a potato or 
ringed like an oak or an 
onion and like the onion 
the same as you go toward 
the core? That would be 
suitable, for is it not 
the human core and the rest 
meant either to keep it 
warm or cold depending 
on the season or just who 
you're talking to, the rest 
a means of getting it from 
one place to another, for it 
must go on two legs down 
the stairs and out the front 
door, it must greet the sun 
with a sigh of pleasure as 
it stands on the front porch 
considering the day's agenda. 
Whether to go straight ahead 
passing through the ranch houses 
of the rich, living rooms 
panelled with a veneer of fake 
Philippine mahogany and bedrooms 
with ermined floors and tangled 
seas of silk sheets, through 
adobe walls and secret gardens 
of sweet corn and marijuana 
until it crosses several sets 
of tracks, four freeways, and 
a mountain range and faces 
a great ocean each drop of 
which is known and like 
no other, each with its own 
particular tang, one suitable 
to bring forth the flavor 
of a noodle, still another 
when dried on an open palm, 
sparkling and tiny, just right 
for a bite of ripe tomato 
or to incite a heavy tongue 
that dragged across a brow 
could utter the awful words, 
"Oh, my love!" and mean them. 
The more one considers 
the more puzzling become 
these shapes. I stare out 
at the Pacific and wonder -- 
noodle, onion, lump, double 
yolked egg on two legs, 
a star as perfect as salt -- 
and my own shape a compound 
of so many lengths, lumps, 
and flat palms. And while I'm 
here at the shore I bow to 
take a few handfuls of water 
which run between my fingers, 
those poor noodles good for 
holding nothing for long, and 
I speak in a tongue hungering 
for salt and water without salt, 
I give a shape to the air going 
out and the air coming in, 
and the sea winds scatter it 
like so many burning crystals 
settling on the evening ocean.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry