When he wrote "Marin-An," Gary Snyder was not far from where I now sit, similarly at peace in verdant surround. And yes, in the morning I too can hear what he heard, that soft continuous roar in the distance, "thousands and thousands of cars / driving men to work." The signal difference is that I don't roll a smoke.
sun breaks over the eucalyptus
grove below the wet pasture,
water’s about hot,
I sit in the open window
& roll a smoke.
distant dogs bark, a pair of
cawing crows; the twang
of a pygmy nuthatch high in a pine-
from behind the cypress windrow
the mare moves up, grazing.
a soft continuous roar
comes out of the far valley
of the six-lane highway-thousands
and thousands of cars
driving men to work.
"Marin-An" by Gary Snyder from No Nature: New and Selected Poems. © Pantheon, 1993