A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have … - William Stafford

Glances

Two people meet. The sky turns winter,
quells whatever they would say.
Then, a periphery glance into danger -
and an avalanche already on its way.

They have been honest all their lives;
careful, calm, never in haste;
they didn't know what it is to meet.
Now they have met: the world is waste.

They find they are riding an avalanche
feeling at rest, all danger gone.
The present looks out of their eyes; they stand
calm and still on a speeding stone.

It is all right to be simply the way you have to be,
among contradictory ridges in some crescendo of knowing.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me.
I didn't hear it — I breathed it into my ears.