Now I carry those days in a tiny box wherever I go. I open the lid like this and let the light glimpse and then glance away. There is a sigh like my … - William Stafford

"Scars"

They tell how it was, and how time
came along, and how it happened
again and again. They tell
the slant life takes when it turns
and slashes your face as a friend.

Any wound is real. In church
a woman lets the sun find
her cheek, and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book; there are sorrows
a choir can't reach when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.

William Stafford, Americans’ Favorite Poems edited by Maggie Dietz and Robert Pinsky (W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition, November 1, 1999)

"The Dream Of Now"

When you wake to the dream of now
from night and its other dream,
you carry day out of the dark
like a flame.
When spring comes north and flowers
unfold from earth and its even sleep,
you lift summer on with your breath
lest it be lost ever so deep.
Your life you live by the light you find
and follow it on as well as you can,
carrying through darkness wherever you go
your one little fire that will start again.

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