Time wants to show you a different country. It’s the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one grandmother hinted at
in her crotchet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.
It’s the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways (and sometimes it’s turn about).
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come-maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.
It’s a balance, the taking and passing it along,
the composting of where you’ve been and how people
and weather treated you. It’s a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, “Here, take it, it’s yours”.
- The Gift, William Stafford
Stafford is a gift that goes on giving. When I’m tired, or I’m blue, or sitting down trying to catch a breath after a long day, or just comforted by the silence of 5 am, browsing Stafford at random, accentuates the mood. I feel my warm breath in the cold room, hear the soft rustling of pages, I taste the hint of bitterness in my morning coffee, swirl it’s aroma round in my nose, and I see outside, the promise of dawn.
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