The Earth as a Being with Its Own Life

The earth was plainly a garden, a park, a being having its own life.  There were minor lumps and blisters here and there about the surface, outcroppings of artificial rock and garbage that men are pleased to call cities, nations, empires.  But even these weren’t really alien to or different from the rest of what there was, what appeared to the eye.  The men and tin cans were a phase of a larger expression, a bigger composition that was working itself out regardless of the notions or wishes or theories of the men who thought of themselves as being in complete control of the entire show.  Here it all was in the sun, or, as Ken was fond of thinking, temporarily bright, actually it all existed in endless darkness and silence, a being that was acting out its own curious desires.

Source:  You Didn't Even Try by Philip Whalen

SF, CA:  Coyote Books, 1967

Philip Whalen was a San Francisco Beat generation poet who later became a Buddhist monk.  He has an original USAmerican voice.  You Didn't Even Try and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head, his two novels, are too little known but well worth reading as are Whalen's poems.  He had his hand on the throttle and his foot upon the treadle of the clutch.