Why I Take Good Care of My Macintosh
By Gary Snyder

Because it buzzes while printing like a planer in a woodshop

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, is my faithful hound

Because its keys click like hail on a rock

& it winks when it goes out,

& puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of

gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods

strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;

And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out

and then highlighted, & vanished in a flash at

"delete" so it teaches

of impermanence and pain;

Because my wife likes it,

& because my computer and me are both brief

in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,

Because I have let it move in with me

right inside 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.

This poem has never been published in any of Gary Snyder's books but has appeared twice in IT Times over the years, due to popular demand. When IT Times first ran this poem in 1988, Snyder reported that he had a Macintosh Plus with a 20 Mb hard disk. Today, he uses a G-3 Mac notebook. Snyder won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Turtle Island. He recently retired from his position as UC Davis faculty and is currently working on North American forest management issues, California water debates, and a new book of poems.

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