A Message from the Wanderer

By William Stafford

Today outside your prison I stand

and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;

you have relatives outside. And there are

thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my

cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,

and shouted my plans to jailers;

but always new plans occurred to me,

or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,

or some stupid jailer would forget

and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—

those feeding creatures outlined by stars,

their skeletons a darkness between jewels,

heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,

just as—often, in light, on the open hills—

you can pass an antelope and not know

and look back, and then—even before you see—

there is something wrong about the grass.

And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m

gone: Tell everyone just to remember

their names, and remind others, later, when we

find each other. Tell the little ones

to cry and then go to sleep, curled up

where they can. And if any of us get lost,

if any of us cannot come all the way—

remember: there will come a time when

all we have said and all we have hoped

will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

Vixen

By W. S. Merwin

Comet of stillness princess of what is over

high note held without trembling without voice without sound

aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets

of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences

never caught in words warden of where the river went

touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished

window onto the hidden place and the other time

at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting

in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born

you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me

you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you

even now you are unharmed even now perfect

as you have always been now when your light paws are running

on the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you

when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer

when I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars

from the creeds of difference and the contradictions

that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications

as long as it lasted until something that we were

had ended when you are no longer anything

let me catch sight of you again going over the wall

and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures

guttering on a screen let my words find their own

places in the silence after the animals

by Robert Penn Warren

In the orchidaceous light of evening
Watch how, from the lowest hedge-leaf, creeps,
Grass blade to blade, the purpling shadow. It spreads
Its spectral ash beneath the leveling, last
Gold rays that, westward, have found apertures
From the magnificent disaster of the day.

Against gold light, beneath the maple leaf,
A pale blue gathers, accumulates, sifts
Downward to modulate the flowery softness
Of gold intrusive through the blackening spruce boughs.
Spruces heighten the last glory beyond by their stubbornness.
They seem rigid in blackened bronze.

Wait, wait— as though a finger were placed to lips.
The first star petals timidly in what
Is not yet darkness. That audacity
Will be rewarded soon. In this transitional light,
While cinders in the west die, the world
Has its last blooming. Let your soul

Be still. All day it has curdled in your bosom
Denatured by intrusion of truth or lie, or both.
Lay both aside, nor debate their nature. Soon,
While not even a last bird twitters, the last bat goes.
Even the last motor fades into distance. The promise
Of moonrise will dawn, and slowly, in all fullness, the moon

Will dominate the sky, the world, the heart,
In white forgiveness.

 

Open a western-facing door, leave a candle burning on the windowsill.

Sky by William Stafford

I like it with nothing. Is it
what I was? What I will be?
I look out there by the hour,
so clear, so sure. I could
smile, or frown—still nothing.

Be my father, be my mother,
great sleep of blue; reach
far within me; open doors,
find whatever is hiding; invite it
for many clear days in the sun.

When I turn away I know
you are there. We won’t forget
each other: every look is a promise.
Others can’t tell what you say
when it’s the blue voice, when
you come to the window and look for me.

Your word arches over
the roof all day. I know it
within my bowed head where
the other sky listens.
You will bring me
everything when the time comes.

My photography is featured in the fiction section of Issue 3 of the New Mexico Review.

My photography will be in the Spring 2016 issue of the New Mexico Review.  I didn’t even use my phone to take it!

On seeing.  (i am always coming back to this one.)

Thou art the dark blue bird, and the green parrot with red eyes.  Though hast the lightning as thy child.  -Upanishads

“Of Verdant Themes: Toward one sentence in Proust,” is one of my favorite essays by Beachy-Quick.  But he’s always been a good one for keeping an eye on the trees.