Quotes from William Stafford

We were traveling between a mountain and Thursday, Holding pages back on the calendar, Remembering every turn in the roadway: We hold that sky, we said, and remember. So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid. Some day like this might save the world.

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.

To do it artificially, to try to hype myself into being a better writer by doggedly reading better literature, is also a mistake. I learn to use the language by the pleasures it gives me when I am able to swim in it or maneuver in it or interchange in it with the people around me.

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes.

Before you have your dreams, your dreams have you, and every day pushes a night before it while the wilderness follows.

Readers should not be loaded with more information and guidance than a lively mind needs--puzzlement can be accepted, but insulting clarity is fatal to a poem.

Things you know before you hear them -- Those are you, Those are why You are in the world.

Waiting for God" This morning I breathed in. It had rained early and the sycamore leaves tapped a few drops that remained, while waving the air's memory back and forth over the lawn and into our open window. Then I breathed out. This deliberate day eased past the calendar and waited. Patiently the sun instructed the shadows how to move; it held them, guided their gradual defining. In the great quiet I carried my life on, in again, out again.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it—I breathed it into my ears. Little

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 breath when I do this. Some days I do this again and again. — William Stafford, from "Remembering," The Darkness Around Us Is Deep: Selected Poems , ed. Robert Bly (HarperPerennial, 1993)

Most mornings I get away, slip out the door before light, set forth on the dim, gray road, letting my feet find a cadence that softly carries me on. Nobody is up—all alone my journey begins. Some

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

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built, when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon.

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing. from "Cutting Loose

Climbing Along the River Willows never forget how it feels to be young Do you remember where you came from? Gravel remembers. Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean. Exactly at midnight yesterday sighs away. What I believe is, all animals have one soul. Over the land they love they crisscross forever.

Learning a Word While Climbing It was a clarity come upon The mountains greater than the snow, a name Pronounced among them like an opening When a traveler finds a pass and escapes a storm. While I was falling I saw such a light: saved, My nylon rope came true and swung me free, I hung above the world and saw it, never So bright again, one long glimpse- Eternity.

For my young friends who are still afraid There is a country to cross you will find in the corner of your eye, in the quick slip of your foot--air far down, a snap that might have caught. And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing voice that finds its way by being afraid. That country is there, for us, carried as it is crossed. What you fear will not go away: it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.

B.C. The seed that met water spoke a little name. (Great sunflowers were lording the air that day; This was before Jesus, before Rome; that other air Was readying our hundreds of years to say things That rain has beat down on over broken stones And heaped behind us in many lands.) Quiet in the earth a drop of water came, And the little seed spoke: "Sequoia is my name.

Love in the Country We live like this: no one but some of the owls awake, and of them only near ones really awake. In the rain yesterday, puddles on the walk to the barn sounded their quick little drinks. The edge of the haymow, all soaked in moonlight, dreams out there like silver music. Are there farms like this where no one likes to live? And the sky going everywhere? While the earth breaks the soft horizon eastward, we study how to deserve what has already been given us

Let my dreams while I'm wide-awake loose. Let me be drowned, baptized, in the light given me. Day comes around, night, fall, winter, spring, summer. Leaves overhead, underfoot. Waves arrive, buffets from friends offended, enemies. Let it all come: this is my way, this is the canoe I'm in. "Adrift

I Have a Witness" Sometimes a center the soul can recognize will speak from anywhere , inside a mountain, or from a whirlwind ... The world can take, the soul restores. A million wrong voices proclaim One light lives forever.

Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.

If you find it difficult to write, lower your standards.

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why. If you do not have things right in your life you will be overwhelmed: you may be heroic, but you will not be wise. If you have things right in your life but do not know why, you are just lucky, and you will not move in the little ways that encourage good fortune.