[Image: “Autumn Grasses,” a two-panel folding screen by 19th-century
Japanese artist Shibata Zeshin. Click image for more information.]
From whiskey river (which has been on a William Stafford binge for a few weeks, not that you’ll find me complaining):
Assurance
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
(William Stafford [source])
