William E. Stafford

The well rising without sound, the spring on a hillside, the plowshare brimming through deep ground everywhere in the field— The sharp swallows in their swerve flaring and hesitating hunting for the final curve coming closer and closer— The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat counseling decision, decision: thunderous examples. I place my feet with care in such a world.

Anyone with quiet pace who walks a gray road in the West may hear a badger underground where in deep flint another time is Caught by flint and held forever, the quiet pace of God stopped still. Anyone who listens walks on time that dogs him single file, To mountains that are far from people, the face of the land gone gray like flint. Badgers dig their little lives there, quiet-paced the land lies gaunt, The railroad dies by a yellow depot, town falls away toward a muddy creek. Badger-gray the sod goes under a river of wind, a hawk on a stick.

1Once in Mexico an old man was leading on a string—was it a cat? And we saw it was a tarantula sidling along in the dust, writing a message from God for people who thought they knew where creature-life ended. 2We came upon scenes like that, the world back of a lurid pane of glass. Like in Reno—they have emptied Hollywood and ordered the extras and the stars to go get married and divorced in Reno, making up their stories as they go and letting their little dogs decide which machines or churches to put nickels and dimes into. 3One day in a cut quick to the bone it was white, white; and then the world came in. I got a tourniquet going, but the snow had learned a whole new way to look at the sky, as in Maryland in the red fields, how the stones come startlingly white, on the battlefields, the cemeteries, along the gouged-out roads. There history blows about on dandelion seeds. 4On the plains near Wakeeney, above the ground, short of the earth, at the level of the eyes, a sunset ray extended for miles. We drove along it, and let our thoughts down gingerly to touch what happened, where Genevieve lived. She went out of the world, for death. Her town holds quiet in the big plain. Lights witness one by one all over what still abides. There was no one better. Her town, her town, her town, the tires repeat as we go by. 5For those my friends who want me to know, to discover and combine: all my best thoughts I roll up and let fall carelessly. It is better than no one follow even the pattern I look onto the back of my hand, for many visions I haven’t dared follow may gather and combine in a flash. Away off. in a space in the sky, I let the sky look at me, and I look back and do not say anything.

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason— her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, then pushed her over the edge into the river.

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

All the Sioux were defeated. Our clan got poor, but a few got richer. They fought two wars. I did not take part. No one remembers your vision or even your real name. Now the children go to town and like loud music. I married a Christian. Crazy Horse, it is not fair to hide a new vision from you. In our schools we are learning to take aim when we talk, and we have found out our enemies. They shift when words do; they even change and hide in every person. A teacher here says hurt or scorned people are places where real enemies hide. He says we should not hurt or scorn anyone, but help them. And I will tell you in a brave way, the way Crazy Horse talked: that teacher is right. I will tell you a strange thing: at the rodeo, close to the grandstand, I saw a farm lady scared by a blown piece of paper; and at that place horses and policemen were no longer frightening, but suffering faces were, and the hunched-over backs of the old. Crazy Horse, tell me if I am right: these are the things we thought we were doing something about. In your life you saw many strange things, and I will tell you another: now I salute the white man’s flag. But when I salute I hold my hand alertly on the heartbeat and remember all of us and how we depend on a steady pulse together. There are those who salute because they fear other flags or mean to use ours to chase them: I must not allow my part of saluting to mean this. All of our promises, our generous sayings to each other, our honorable intentions—those I affirm when I salute. At these times it is like shutting my eyes and joining a religious colony at prayer in the gray dawn in the deep aisles of a church. Now I have told you about new times. Yes, I know others will report different things. They have been caught by weak ways. I tell you straight the way it is now, and it is our way, the way we were trying to find. The chokecherries along our valley still bear a bright fruit. There is good pottery clay north of here. I remember our old places. When I pass the Musselshell I run my hand along those old grooves in the rock.

We wondered what our walk should mean, taking that un-march quietly; the sun stared at our signs— “Thou shalt not kill.” Men by a tavern said, “Those foreigners . . .” to a woman with a fur, who turned away— like an elevator going down, their look at us. Along a curb, their signs lined across, a picket line stopped and stared the whole width of the street, at ours: “Unfair.” Above our heads the sound truck blared— by the park, under the autumn trees— it said that love could fill the atmosphere: Occur, slow the other fallout, unseen, on islands everywhere—fallout, falling unheard. We held our poster up to shade our eyes. At the end we just walked away; no one was there to tell us where to leave the signs.

When we first moved here, pulled the trees in around us, curled our backs to the wind, no one had ever hit the moon—no one. Now our trees are safer than the stars, and only other people's neglect is our precious and abiding shell, pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone. From our snug place we shout religiously for attention, in order to hide: only silence or evasion will bring dangerous notice, the hovering hawk of the state, or the sudden quiet stare and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor. This message we smuggle out in its plain cover, to be opened quietly: Friends everywhere— we are alive! Those moon rockets have missed millions of secret places! Best wishes. Burn this.

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world. Plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code. We sang hymns in the house; the roof was near God. The light bulb that hung in the pantry made a wan light, but we could read by it the names of preserves— outside, the buffalo grass, and the wind in the night. A wildcat sprang at Grandpa on the Fourth of July when he was cutting plum bushes for fuel, before Indians pulled the West over the edge of the sky. To anyone who looked at us we said, “My friend”; liking the cut of a thought, we could say “Hello.” (But plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.) The sun was over our town; it was like a blade. Kicking cottonwood leaves we ran toward storms. Wherever we looked the land would hold us up.

The only relics left are those long spangled seconds our school clock chipped out when you crossed the social hall and we found each other alive, by our glances never to accept our town's ways, torture for advancement, nor ever again be prisoners by choice. Now I learn you died serving among the natives of Garden City, Kansas, part of a Peace Corps before governments thought of it. Ruth, over the horizon your friends eat foreign chaff and have addresses like titles, but for you the crows and hawks patrol the old river. May they never forsake you, nor you need monuments other than this I make, and the one I hear clocks chip in that world we found.