[Image: “Little Red Riding Hood,” copyright Amanda Gray; all rights reserved. See original at her blog, what now]

From whiskey river:

Cutting Loose

for James Dickey

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

(William Stafford [source])

…and:

The Next Time
(excerpt)

Perfection is out of the question for people like us,
so why plug away at the same old self when the landscape

has opened its arms and given us marvelous shrines
to flock towards? The great motels to the west are waiting,

in somebody’s yard a pristine dog is hoping that we’ll drive by,
and on the rubber surface of a lake people bobbing up
and down

will wave. The highway comes right to the door, so let’s
take off before the world out there burns up. Life should
be more

than the body’s weight working itself from room to room.
A turn through the forest will do us good, so will a spin

among the farms. Just think of the chickens strutting,
the cows swinging their udders, and flicking their tails at flies.

And one can imagine prisms of summer light breaking against
the silent, haze-filled sleep of the farmer and his wife.

(Mark Strand [source])

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