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 crochet 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 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" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 1999.Art credit: Detail from "Extended Ripple Crochet Pattern," crocheting and photograph by Jessie At Home (originally color and vertical).
quite a wonderful wake-up-to-the-day poem - thank you
ReplyDeleteThe use of "composting" here is wonderful, and then followed by that next sentence. I think of creating soil through composting--building the land, or the country.
ReplyDeletethe 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.