The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die: and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

--William Stafford

Climbing along the River

Willows never forget how it feels

 to be young. 

 Do you remember where you came from?

 Gravel remembers.

Even the upper end of the river

 believes in the ocean. 

 Exactly at midnight 

yesterday sighs away. 

 What I believe is,

 all animals have one soul. 

 Over the land they love

 they crisscross forever.

--William Stafford

Sayings of the Blind

Feeling is believing.

 Mountains don't exist. But their slopes do.

 Little people have low voices.

 All things, even the rocks, make a little noise. 

 The silence back of all sound is called "the sky." 

There's a big stranger in town called the sun.

 He doesn't speak to us but puts out a hand. 

 Night opens a door into a cellar--

     you can smell it coming. 

On Sundays everyone stands farther apart.

 Velvet feels black. 

 Meeting cement is never easy. 

 What do they mean when they say night is gloomy?

 Edison didn't invent much.

 Whenever you wake up it's morning. 

 Names have a flavor.

--William Stafford

painting by Rene Magritte

Something To Declare

 

They have never had a war big enough

 to slow that pulse in the earth under

 our path near that old river.

 Even as a swallow swims through the air

 a certain day skips and returns, hungry for

the feel and lift of the time passed by.

 That was the place where I lived awhile

 dragging a wing, and the spin of the world

 started its tilt into where it is now.

 They say that history is going on somewhere.

 They say it won’t stop. I have held

 one picture still for a long time and waited.

 This is only a little report floated

 into the slow current so the wind will know

 which way to come if it wants to find me. 

 --William Stafford

Waiting By the Sea

This tidepool day you inhabit contains more than

 you need. It stirs now and then to bring

 faint news of old storms deeper than the earth.

 From caves around you feelers and claws wave

 their greeting, then slowly withdraw

    and wait for tomorrow. 

 Sunlight is alive when it swims down where you are,

 and you stand still, alert to take in the sun.

 You become a stone, then a ghost of a stone,

 then the gone water’s brilliant memory 

    of where a stone was.

 Making the day expand in your heart and return,

 you play a limited part in whatever life is,

 practicing for that great gift when enlightenment

 comes, that long instant when the tide

     calls your name.

 --William Stafford

Joyce Morgan, a long-time beloved friend, died last week.  Since she once mentioned that she enjoyed Poetry Monday, this repost is dedicated to her memory.  May she rest in peace.  The good she did and was lives on.

The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune

 

Wisdom is having things right in your life

 and knowing why.

 If you do not have things right in your life

 you will be overwhelmed:

 you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.

 If you have things right in your life

 but do not know why,

 you are just lucky, and you will not move

 in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

 The saddest are those not right in their lives

 who are acting to make things right for others:

 they act only from the self—

and that self will never be right:

 no luck, no help, no wisdom.

--William Stafford

I can think of situations in which the final stanza is not necessarily true.  But it is worth pondering.

Dedications/Pledges/Commitments

 

For the past.

 For my own path.

 For surprises.

 For mistakes that worked so well.

 For tomorrow if I’m there.

 For the next real thing. 

 Then for carrying it all

 through whatever is necessary.

 For following the little god who speaks only to me.

--William Stafford

BK photo 2023

Today Again

 Beside my ear the bowstring says,

 “I’m just doing my job, goodby,”

 and the halves of the bow begin to lament,

 “It’s yesterday all over again—

 Now! Now! Repent! Repent!

 There goes the arrow to break the news:

 “This is a world where everything 

provides its own best argument,

headlong into being.” It all springs alive—

Event. Event. Event. Event.

 --William Stafford

The Gift

Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one

 that your life conceals, the one waiting outside

 when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at

 in her crochet design, the one almost found

 over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

 It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.

 You get killed now and then, violated

 in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)

You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait

 and pray, and maybe good things come---maybe

 the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.

 You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

 It's a balance, the taking and passing along,

 the composting of where you've been and how people

 and weather treated you. It's a country where

 you already are, bringing where you have been.

Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,

 turning the world, moving the air, calling,

 every morning, " Here, take it, it's yours."

---William Stafford

Happy Holidays, All

Freedom

Freedom is not following a river.

 Freedom is following a river, 

  though, if you want to. 

 It is deciding now by what happens now.

 It is knowing that luck makes a difference.

 No leader is free, no follower is free—

   the rest of us can often be free.

 Most of the world are living by

 creeds too odd, chancy, and habit-forming

   to be worth arguing about by reason.

 If you are oppressed, wake up about

 four in the morning; most places,

 you can usually be free some of the time

 if you wake up before other people.

--William Stafford

Fall Wind

 Pods of summer crowd around the door;

 I take them in the autumn of my hands.

 Last night I heard the first cold wind outside;

 the wind blew soft, and yet I shiver twice:

 Once for thin walls, once for the sound of time.

 --William Stafford

Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron

Out of their loneliness for each other

 two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch

forward and become suddenly a life

 lifted from the dawn or the rain. It is

the wilderness come back again, a lagoon

with our city reflected in its eye.

 We live by faith in such presences.

 It is a test for us, that thin

 but real, undulating figure that promises,

 “If you keep faith I will exist

 at the edge, where your vision joins

 the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,

 feet that go down in the mud where the truth is.”

 --William Stafford

Climbing along the River

Willows never forget how it feels

 to be young. 

 Do you remember where you came from?

 Gravel remembers.

Even the upper end of the river

 believes in the ocean. 

 Exactly at midnight 

yesterday sighs away. 

 What I believe is,

 all animals have one soul. 

 Over the land they love

 they crisscross forever.

--William Stafford

Waiting by the Sea

This tidepool day you inhabit contains more than

 you need. It stirs now and then to bring

 faint news of old storms deeper than the earth.

 From caves around you feelers and claws wave

 their greeting, then slowly withdraw

    and wait for tomorrow. 

 Sunlight is alive when it swims down where you are,

 and you stand still, alert to take in the sun.

 You become a stone, then a ghost of a stone,

 then the gone water’s brilliant memory 

    of where a stone was.

 Making the day expand in your heart and return,

 you play a limited part in whatever life is,

 practicing for that great gift when enlightenment

 comes, that long instant when the tide

     calls your name.

 --William Stafford

Watching the Jet Planes Dive

 

We must go back and find a trail on the ground

 back of the forest and mountain on the slow land;

 we must begin to circle on the intricate sod.

 By such wild beginnings without help we may find

 the small trail on through the buffalo-bean vines. 

 

We must go back with noses and the palms of our hands,

 and climb over the map in far places, everywhere,

 and lie down whenever there is doubt and sleep there.

 If roads are unconnected we must make a path,

 no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

 We must find something forgotten by everyone alive,

 and make some fabulous gesture when the sun goes down

 as they do by custom in little Mexico towns

 where they crawl for some ritual up a rocky steep. 

The jet planes dive; we must travel on our knees.

 --William Stafford

A Face

It's just by chance, who

 you are, but given myself

 I take care of this being.

 Nobody else will remember

 its hunger, cold, loneliness:

 I will be reminded, and care.

 This face, like an old watch,

 I carry wherever I go.

 Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,

 you should forgive my regret:

 my wanting another. I carry it

 as you did. It belongs

 somewhere, and I am taking it there.

 On corners I let the wind

 have all the world, and I turn

 as a ship accepts the waves

 but is itself and has a voyage

 built into it, stubbornly. 

 The choice of being who you are

 is offered us, or being nothing. 

The mask of myself is an old gift

 nobody else took. So I brought it here.

--William Stafford

Awareness

Awareness

 Of a summer day, of what moves

 in the trees.

 Of your own departing. Of that branch

 no one else notices.

 Of time, what it carries, the sideways

 drift of it. 

 Of hiding important things because

 they don’t belong in the world.

 Of now. Of maybe. Of something

 different being true. 

 --Willam Stafford

A Face

A Face

 It’s just by chance, who you are,

 but given myself

 I take care of this being.

 Nobody else will remember

 its hunger, cold, loneliness: 

I will be reminded, and care. 

 This face, like an old watch,

 I carry wherever I go.

 Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,

 you should forgive my regret:

 my wanting another. I carry it

 as you did. It belongs

 somewhere, and I am taking it there.

 On corners I let the wind

 have all the world, and I turn

 as a ship accepts the waves

 but is itself and has a voyage

 built into it, stubbornly. 

 The choice of being who you are

 is offered us, or being nothing.

 The mask of myself is an old gift

 nobody else took. So I brought it here. 

-- William Stafford

Illustration: Self-Portrait by Gino Severini

The Way It Is (The Thread)

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

 things that change. But it doesn’t change.

 People wonder about what you are pursuing.

 You have to explain about the thread.

 But it is hard for others to see.

 While you hold it you can’t get lost. 

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

 or die; and you suffer and get old.

 Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

 You don’t ever let go of the thread.

 --William Stafford 

 Approaching my 75th seems a good time to repost this poem, which expresses a guiding principle of my life and (as it turns out) my lifetime.

Two Poems for Earth Day

Earth Dweller 

It was all the clods at once become

 precious; it was the barn, and the shed,

 and the windmill, my hands, the crack

 Arlie made in the ax handle: oh, let me stay

 here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;

 let the sun casually rise and set.

 If I have not found the right place,

 teach me; for, somewhere inside, the clods are

 vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing

 for the saints forever, the shed and windmill

 rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.

 Now I know why people worship, carry around

 magic emblems, wake up talking dreams

 they teach to their children: the world speaks.

 The world speaks everything to us.

 It is our only friend.

 --William Stafford

The Epitaph Ending in And

 In the last storm, when hawks

 blast upward and a dove is

 driven into the grass, its broken wings

 a delicate design, the air between

 wracked thin where it stretched before,

 a clear spring bent close too often

 (that Earth should ever have such wings

 burnt on in blind color!), this will be

 good as an epitaph:

 Doves did not know where to fly, and

--William Stafford