On Quitting a Little College
By footworn boards, by steps
that sagged years after the pride of workmen,
by things that had to do so long they now seemed right,
by ways of acting so old they grooved the people
(and all this among fields that never quit
under a patient sky),
I taught. And then I quit.
"Let's walk home," the president said.
He faced down the street,
and on the rollers of bird flight
through the year-round air
that little town became all it had promised him.
He could not quit; he could not let go fast enough;
his duties carried him.
The bitter habit of the forlorn cause
is my addiction. I miss it now, but face
ahead and go in my own way
toward my own place.
- William Stafford
In Silence
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as they stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
"I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?"
- Thomas Merton
Leaving the Catskills on the Cusp of Spring
Coming on tumbling
this is how it begins again,
a rusty truck headed somewhere,
a potter's hands
centering the timely clay.
Loving and rambling,
the crisp edges of these mountains
have held always me
on home ways.
Returning to meandering,
finally tuned to a compass
not too tight,
all the glass shapes
are taking their places.
Stepping into changing,
the pine wind of these last mornings
is wheeling and aboriginal,
a now sound
full of soon-to-be.
Pausing before the knob,
memories of old doors
are less important
than the vital breath and click
of this harmonizing.
Singing between my cells,
dead ash trees lean through the forest
and maple buds wait-push through
passing gray days...
we're pouring into invisible molds
all the fine joy atoms
that electrify our questions
beneath the encumbered surfaces.
Dripping from rooftops,
the eaves catch roasting coffee
against crackled paint.
Daffodils, dressed in thin ice,
press their vivid waiting
up to this old window.
