WILLIAM STAFFORD ~

 

A Letter Not Even To Deliver

The world often has a quiet look.

I go down in the orchard quietly

to work every day, because trees keep

trouble away and a grove makes quiet work.

But a jagged glimpse can come — say, when a bird sings

down a row, or over toward a hill. I bow

to near views, and listen close, for this one day:

splendor is not for daily things.

And a bowed back is a disguise. I remember you, fair.

If you visit me, come some quiet way.

There might be an instant; the light might flame —

be quiet then. We are not too try far.

Only the brownest birds that come here belong here.

__________________________

William Stafford

Smoke's Way

Graywolf Press, 1983

ASK ME ~

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thoughts, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.



I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.





_________________________________

WILLIAM STAFFORD
The Way It Is
(Graywolf 1998)