My Macintosh computer, a poem by Gary Snyder.

I've been a happy Mac user since 1985 and so has today's featured poet, Gary Snyder. Snyder was born in San Francisco in 1930 and has worked as a poet, essayist, travel writer, translator, and educator since then. He's been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1974; the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1997; the John Hay Award for Nature Writing in 1997; and most recently the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2008. A prominent environmental activist, Snyder served for many years as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, where he is now Professor Emeritus of English, as well as a member of the California Arts Council. His philosophy of life is, "Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there."

Why I take good care of my Macintosh computer by Gary Snyder

Because it broods under it's hood like a perched falcon
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,
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 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.