Home > Work > Stories that Could Be True: New and Collected Poems
1 " Our Story"Remind me again—together wetrace our strange journey, findeach other, come on laughing.Some time we’ll cross where lifeends. We’ll both look backas far as forever, that first day.I’ll touch you—a new world then.Stars will move a different way.We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.Remind me again. "
― William Stafford , Stories that Could Be True: New and Collected Poems
2 " A Walk in the Country"To walk anywhere in the world, to livenow, to speak, to breathe a harmlessbreath: what snowflake, even, may trytoday so calm a life,so mild a death?Out in the country once,walking the hollow night,I felt a burden of silver come:my back had caught moonlightpouring through the trees like money.That walk was late, though.Late, I gently came into town,and a terrible thing had happened:the world, wide, unbearably bright,had leaped on me. I carried mountains.Though there was much I knew, thoughkind people turned away,I walked there ashamed—into that still pictureto bring my fear and pain.By dawn I felt all right;my hair was covered with dew;the light was bearable; the aircame still and cool.And God had come back thereto carry the world again.Since then, while over the worldthe wind appeals events,and people contend like fools,like a stubborn tumbleweed I hold,hold where I live, and look into every face:Oh friends, where can one find a partnerfor the long dance over the fields? "