William Stafford

I put my foot in cold waterand hold it there: early morningsthey had to wade through broken iceto find the traps in the deep channelwith their hands, drag up the chains andthe drowned beaver
The slow currentof the life below tugs at me all da...

Setting a trotline after sundown if we went far enough away in the night sometimes up out of deep water would come a secret-headed channel cat,
Eyes that were still eyes in the rush of darkness, flowing feelers noncommittal and black, and hid...

With Kit,
Age 7, at the
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

The only relics left are those long spangled seconds our school clock chipped out when you crossed the social hall and we found each other alive, by our glances never to accept our town's ways, torture for advancement, nor ever again be prisoners ...

Got up on a cool morning
Leaned out a window
No cloud, no wind
Air that flowers heldfor awhile

The light along the hills in the morningcomes down slowly, naming the treeswhite, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate
Notice what this poem is not doing
A house, a house, a barn, the oldquarry, where the river shrugs—how much...

The well rising without sound, the spring on a hillside, the plowshare brimming through deep ground everywhere in the field— The sharp swallows in their swerve flaring and hesitating hunting for the final curve coming closer and closer— The swallo...

When I face north a lost Creeon some new shore puts a moccasin down,rock in the light and noon for seeing,he in a hurry and I beside
It will be a long trip; he will be a new chief;we have drunk new water from an unnamed stream;under little da...

In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us
Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: ...

Cold nights outside the taverns in Wyoming pickups and big semis lounge idling, letting their haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow, their owners inside for hours, forgetting as well as they can the miles, the circling plains, the s...

The light by the barn that shines all nightpales at dawn when a little breeze comes
A little breeze comes breathing the fieldsfrom their sleep and waking the slow windmill
The slow windmill sings the long dayabout anguish and loss to the...

In the late night listening from bedI have joined the ambulance or the patrolscreaming toward some drama, the kind of endthat Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead
The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel,farming out there beyond...

Ours are the streets where Bess first met her cancer
She went to work every day past the secure houses
At her job in the library she arranged better and better flowers, and when students asked for books her hand went out to help
In ...

Aristotle was a little man with eyes like a lizard, and he found a streak down the midst of things, a smooth place for his feet much more important than the carved handles on the coffins of the great
He said you should put your hand out at th...

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world
Plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code
We sang hymns in the house; the roof was near God
The light bulb that hung in the pantry made a wan light, but we could read by it...

Even in the cave of the night when youwake and are free and lonely,neglected by others, discarded, loved onlyby what doesn't matter—even in thatbig room no one can see,you push with your eyes till forevercomes in its twisted figure eightand lies d...