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

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.

"Waking At 3 a.m."

Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn’t matter — even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.

You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right. And you sleep.

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.