William Stafford

My friend Inge reminded me this week what a great poet William Stafford is. He gives people like me hope because his poems were first published when he was in his late 40s. He was born in Kansas but moved to Oregon, where he wrote this poem. I lived in Oregon and California, and I can attest to the mountains being there one day, and not the next. In fact the day I left Oregon, there had been an ice storm, and every twig was encased in ice, AND there was fog. It was like a fairyland. But then, of course, the poetic perspective makes it even more beautiful, as Stafford shows. As Donald Hall wrote, Stafford's "ordinariness doth tease us out of thought; while we are thoughtless, the second language of poetry speaks to us."

"Mountain Frost" Photo free for any use from visualparadox.com


A Valley Like This


Sometimes you look at an empty valley like this,
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the whole world happened
"there was nothing, and then"

But maybe some time you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world become nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?

We have to watch it and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear
if we don't watch out.

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world.
Hold out your hands to it. When mornings and evenings
roll along, watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party that your life is.