#PoetryBreak: Across Kansas by William Stafford

Geometry (M.A. Reilly)

Across Kansas

 - William Stafford

My family slept those level miles
but like a bell rung deep till dawn
I drove down an aisle of sound,
nothing real but in the bell,
past the town where I was born.

Once you cross a land like that
you own your face more: what the light
struck told a self; every rock
denied all the rest of the world.

We stopped at Sharon Springs and ate--

My state still dark, my dream too long to tell.

#Poetry Break: Ask Me by William Stafford

Sky Breakage on 9/11 (M.A. Reilly)

Ask Me

by William Stafford

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.

#PoetryBreak: At the Bomb Testing Site by William Stafford

Looking East (M.A. Reilly)

At the Bomb Testing Site

by William Stafford

At noon in the desert a panting lizard   

waited for history, its elbows tense,   

watching the curve of a particular road   

as if something might happen.

It was looking at something farther off   

than people could see, an important scene   

acted in stone for little selves

at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it   

under a sky that never cared less.   

Ready for a change, the elbows waited.   

The hands gripped hard on the desert.

#PoetryBreak: Any Morning by William Stafford

Painting (M.A. Reilly, 2017)

Any Morning
by William Stafford

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

Poetry Break: Cutting Loose - A Poem by William Stafford

Cypress with Birds (M.A. Reilly, Tuscany)

Cutting Loose

by William Stafford (From Dancing with Joy)

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.

Being

Watching (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

Being a Person - William Stafford

   

Be a person here. 
Stand by the river, invoke the owls. 
Invoke winter, then spring. 
Let any season that wants to come here make its own call. 
After that sound goes away, wait. 
A slow bubble rises through the earth 
and begins to include sky, stars, all space, 
even the outracing, expanding thought. 
Come back and hear the little sound again. 
[Come back, and hear that call.] 
Suddenly this dream you are having matches 
Everyone’s dream, and the result is the world. 
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any 
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling. 
How you stand here is important. 
How you listen for the next things to happen. 

How you breathe.

Marked

 - Carmen Tafolla

Never write
with pencil
mi'ja
It is for those
who would erase.

Make your mark proud
and open,
Brave,
beauty folded into
its imperfection,
Like a piece of turquoise
marked.

Never write
with a pencil,
mi'ja.
Write with ink
or mud,
or berries grown in
gardens never owned,
or, sometimes,
if necessary,
blood.