Readers should not be loaded with more information and guidance than a lively mind needs — puzzlement can be accepted, but insulting clarity is fatal… - William Stafford

Ask Me

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.

Those who champion democracy, but make a fetish of never accepting anything they don't agree with — what advantage do they see in democracy?

. . . On a sandbar
sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it
a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?