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 o… - William Stafford

We stood by the library. It was an August night. Priests and sisters of hundreds of unsaid creeds passed us going their separate pondered roads. We watched them cross under the corner light. Freights on the edge of town were carrying away flatcars of steel to be made into secret guns; we knew, being human, that they were enemy guns, and we were somehow vowed to poverty. No one stopped or looked long or held out a hand. They were following orders received from hour to hour, so many signals, all strange, from a foreign power: But tomorrow, you whispered, peace may flow over the land. At that corner in a flash of lightning we two stood; that glimpse we had will stare through the dark forever: on the poorest roads we would be walkers and beggars, toward some deathless meeting involving a crust of bread.

"They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?" — and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king.

"Assurance"

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums, or in the silence after lightning before it says its names-and then the clouds' wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles-you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head- that's what the silence meant: you're not alone. The whole wide world pours down.