William Stafford Away Poems
- 1. Walking West
Anyone with quiet pace who
walks a gray road in the West
may hear a badger underground where
in deep flint another time is
... - 2. Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing
The light along the hills in the morning
comes down slowly, naming the trees
white, then coasting the ground for stones to nominate.
... - 3. Hay-cutters
Time tells them. They go along touching
the grass, the feathery ends. When it feels
just so, they start the mowing machine,
leaving the land its long windrows,
... - 4. Atavism
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Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
... - 5. Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
... - 6. Accountability
Cold nights outside the taverns in Wyoming
pickups and big semis lounge idling, letting their
haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow,
their owners inside for hours, forgetting as well
... - 7. For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
... - 8. In The Deep Channel
Setting a trotline after sundown
if we went far enough away in the night
sometimes up out of deep water
would come a secret-headed channel cat,
... - 9. Thinking For Berky
In the late night listening from bed
I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.
...
