I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly. - William Stafford

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

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 elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders 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.

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.

I would exchange all that I have written for the next thing.