"With Kit, Age Seven, at the Beach We would climb the highest dune, from there to gaze and come down: the ocean was performing; we contributed our c… - William Stafford

"With Kit, Age Seven, at the Beach

We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

"How far could you swim, Daddy, in such a storm?"
"As far as was needed," I said,
and as I talked, I swam."

English
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Additional quotes by William Stafford

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 the walk to the barn sounded their
quick little drinks.

The edge of the haymow, all
soaked in moonlight,
dreams out there like silver music.
Are there farms like this where
no one likes to live?

And the sky going everywhere?
While the earth breaks the soft horizon
eastward, we study how to deserve
what has already been given us

All events and experiences are local, somewhere. And all human enhancements of events and experiences — all the arts — are regional in the sense that they derive from immediate relation to felt life.
It is this immediacy that distinguishes art. And paradoxically the more local the feeling in art, the more all people can share it; for that vivid encounter with the stuff of the world is our common ground.
Artists, knowing this mutual enrichment that extends everywhere, can act, and praise, and criticize, as insiders — the means of art is the life of all people. And that life grows and improves by being shared. Hence, it is good to welcome any region you live in or come to, or think of, for that is where life happens to be, right where you are.

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