I’ve been reading a lot of Kansas raised poet Williams Stafford’s work lately and am really enjoying it. There’s a really great biography on the Poetry Foundation’s website (read it here). I’ve always been inspired by the imagery and ideas within poems, and I really connect to a lot of those in Stafford’s work.. maybe it’s the Kansas thing..
Independence Creek, Atchison, KS, 2009.
Sending These Messages
by William Stafford
Over these writings I bent my head.
Now you are considering them. If you
turn away I will look up: a bridge
that was there will be gone.
For the rest of your life I will stand here,
reaching across.
If these writings can bring a turn
or an echo that touches you ~ maybe
a face, a slant, a tune ~ you will stop
too and bend over them. When you
look up, your thought will reach
wherever I am.
I know it is strange. and there is no measure
for this. The only connection we make
is like a twinge when sometimes they change
the beat in music, and we sprawl with it
and hear another world for a minute
that is almost there.