Love in the Country We live like this: no one but some of the owls awake, and of them only near ones really awake. In the rain yesterday, puddles on… - William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say. — William Stafford, “Ask Me,” Ask Me; 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford (Graywolf Press, 1998)

The things you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
And things you know before you hear them — those are you,
Those are why you are in the world.

Sending These Messages

Over these writings I bent my head.
Now you are considering them. If you
Turn away I will look up: a bridge
That was there will be gone.
For the rest of your life I will stand here,
Reaching across.

If these writings can bring a turn
Or an echo that touches you-maybe
A face, a slant, a tune- you will stop
Too and bend over them. When you
Look up, your thought will reach
Wherever I am.

I know it is strange. And there’s no measure
For this. The only connection we make
Is a like a twinge when sometimes they change
The beat in music, and we sprawl with it
And hear another world for a minute
That is almost there.