adrift

.

Let my dreams while I'm wide-awake
loose. Let me be drowned, baptized,
in the light given me. Day comes around,
night, fall, winter, spring,
summer. Leaves over head, under foot.
Waves arrive, buffets from friends
offended, enemies. Let it all come:
this is my way, this is the canoe I'm in.



~ William Stafford

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.

The morning before he died in the final year of his seventies,

 he drafted a poem containing these lines:

You can’t tell when strange things with meaning

will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down

just the way it was. “You don’t have to

prove anything,” my mother said. “Just be ready

for what God sends.” I listened and put my hand

out in the sun again. It was all easy.

~ William Stafford

from The Way It Is

with thanks to Maria Popova

it all moves

 

 

 

 

 

 

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves–trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them–you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford 

the great blending

For intervals, then, throughout our lives
we savor a concurrence, the great blending
of our chance selves with what sustains
all chance. We ride the wave and are
the wave. And with renewed belief
inner and outer we find our talk
turned to prayer, our prayer into truth:
for an interval, early, we become at home in the world.

~ William Stafford

we should consider

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

 

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

 

And as elephants parade holding each elephants tail,

but if one wander the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

 

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider --

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

 

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give -- yes or no, or maybe --

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. 

 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford

 from The Answers Are Inside the Mountains:

 Meditations on the Writing Life (Poets On Poetry)

 

 

 

 

next time

 

 

 

 

 

 Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.


When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
had to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.


And for all, I'd know more - the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.






~ William Stafford

with thanks to being silently drawn

 

where the battle did not happen

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed—or were killed—on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

~  William Stafford

better thoughts?

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~ William Stafford
from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems

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
from The Way it Is, 1998



William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem was written 26 days before he passed.
One of his students, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, wrote, “In our time there has been no poet who revived human hearts and spirits more convincingly than William Stafford. There has been no one who gave more courage to a journey with words, and silence, and an awakened life.”

annals of T'AI CHI: "Push Hands"

 

 

 

 

 

In this long routine "Push Hands,"

one recognizes force and yields, then 

slides, again, again, endless like water,

what goes away, what follows, aggressive

courtesy till force must always lose,

lost in the seethe and retreat of the ocean.

 

So does the sail fill, and air come

just so, because of what's gone, "Yes"

in all things, "Yes, come in if you

insist," and thus conducted find a way

out,  yin following and becoming  

by a beautiful absence it's partner yang. 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford

from Poetry, Sept. 1992

 

 

 

inside the river

Inside the river is there a river? -
it could follow slow water the way
the real current follows a stiller
shore. And in your life the life that
hurries could pass, and pass its
open neighbor the earth, and its shore
the sky. To be here, and always to find
places in the current, the dreams
the river has - surely we bubbles
ought to tell about it?

Listen: One of the rooms the river has
after its bridge and its bend in the mountains
is a place waiting for the sun every
afternoon, when the sun dwells
at a slant under a log and finds
that little yellow room and a waterbug
trying to learn circles but never making
one its shadow approves. Miles later
the river tries to recall that dream,
turning with all of its twisting self
that found gravel and found it good.

Just before the ocean that river
turns on its back and side and slowly
invites the world and the air and the sky,
trying to give away everything, everything.

  ~ William Stafford

readings

~ 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

ways to live

1. India

In India in their lives they happen
again and again, being people or
animals. And if you live well
your next time could be even better.

That's why they often look into your eyes
and you know some far-off story
with them and you in it, and some
animal waiting over at the side.

Who would want to happen just once?
It's too abrupt that way, and
when you're wrong, it's too late
to go back - you've done it forever.

And you can't have that soft look when you
pass, the way they do it in India.

2. Having It Be Tomorrow

Day, holding its lantern before it,
moves over the whole earth slowly
to brighten that edge and push it westward.
Shepherds on upland pastures begin fires
for breakfast, beads of light that extend
miles of horizon. Then it's noon and
coasting toward a new tomorrow.

If you're in on that secret, a new land
will come every time the sun goes
climbing over it, and the welcome of children
will remain every day new in your heart.
Those around you don't have it new,
and they shake their heads turning grey every
morning when the sun comes up. And you laugh.

3. Being Nice And Old

After their jobs are done old people
cackle together. They look back and shiver,
all of that was so dizzying when it happened;
and now if there is any light at all it
knows how to rest on the faces of friends.
And any people you don't like, you just turn
the page a little more and wait while they
find out what time is and begin to bend
lower; or you can turn away
and let them drop off the edge of the world.

4. Good Ways To Live

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves - trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them - you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

 

 

 

 ~ William Stafford

from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems

 art: Parliament of the Birds. Mantiq Ut'tair, Farahaddin Attar

 

"Ways to Live" was written from July 19 through 21 of 1993,

 just over a month before William Stafford's death in August of that year.

 

 

 

 

start with the little things

Start with little things.

Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands --

Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.

Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.


—William Stafford
from The Way It Is
with thanks to Love is a Place

listen

My father could hear a little animal step,

or a moth in the dark against the screen,

and every far sound pulled the listening out

into places the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night

than came to our porch for the family on the wind;

we watched him listen, and his face go keen,

till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father brought in so much that we still stand

inviting the quiet by turning the face,

waiting for the time when the soft wild night

will reach to us here, from that other place.

~ William Stafford 

from West of your City

why I am happy

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.
I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.
And I know where it is. 

  ~ William Stafford

photo from Oregon Wild

 

 

 

 

the discovery of daily experience

It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,
hall, street, some great even: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits - but
there is a whisper. You always live so,
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moment's touch.

You see the people around you - the honors
they bear - a crutch, a cane, eye patch,
or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn
aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare
our kind, who serve on the human front and earn
whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw
Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)

When the world is like this - and it is -
whispers, honors or penalties disguised - no wonder
art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,
or any people, live long enough in a place to
build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are
such beings as interact elaborately with what
surrounds us. The limited actual world we successively
overcome by fictions and by the mind's inventions
that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect
the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence
may become art).

- William Stafford
from  Writing the Australian Crawl: 

Views on the Writer’s Vocation

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

 from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

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