Even in quiet places...

Image of Shenandoah Falls by Washingtonian.com
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I've posted two poems by William Stafford. I find his work very appealing: it's contemporary and lean in its vocabulary and very much within the grasp of a broad audience. Most of all, Stafford has something to say and he says it well.

This poem, in the collection Even In Quiet Places, strikes me at the heart of being 61 years old when I find myself musing on what's been as well as on what's to be. I think it will appeal to younger readers, too.


You Reading This: Stop
Don't just stay tangled up in your life.
Out there in some river or cave where you
could have been, some absolute, lonely
dawn may arrive and begin the story
that means what everything is about.

So don't just look either:
let your whole self drift like a breath and learn
its way down through the trees. Let that fine
waterfall-smoke filter its gone, magnified presence
all through the forest. Stand there till all that
you were can wander away and come back slowly;
carrying a strange new flavor into your life.
Feel it? That what we mean. So don't just
read this -- rub your thought over it.

Now you can go on.

-William Stafford


...Stand there till all that
you were can wander away and come back slowly;
carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

You know, that I understand that gives me hope...


-ConcordPastor