Sound of the Ax: Aphorisms and Poems by William Stafford

Things the Wind Says

48 Things the Wind Says Everything still ought to move. Of all plants I believe my favorite is the tumbleweed. Water will talk if stirred. There are places in the mountains I am afraid to tell about, but at night you can hear me hint about them. Islands aren’t so much. I never saw a cloud I didn’t like. Steam is all right, but I prefer smoke. I was born in Kansas, but now I travel all over the world. I spend my vacations in Texas. The best job I ever had was with Sir Francis Drake. My cousins live in water: they’re a slow bunch. I’ll dance with anyone—royalty, commoners, but especially refugees. . . . 49 A fierce walking—to see, hear, smell, taste, feel something. This takes the place of a vocation. Does life have a plot? At first I thought a person might impose some untrue pattern, myth, on experience so that the belief would make living easier, better. Then I thought: everyone does. I want to know fewer things but know them more. The ideal teacher—someone who can’t talk. Choose a villain. Hitler, say. Our feelings about him are a result of his actions. What were his feelings a result of? When you rebel against human activities and values, you are not leaving human activities and values behind. You can compost newspapers. 50 Poetry is prose without the mistakes. Seeing the work of Dutch painters—the gesture of making something from whatever is there. Writing comes about through quick, successive, cumulative overlays of opportunity put upon any chance beginning. I will follow my experiments, even if they don’t converge with needs. “I’m wrong about that.”—one of the handy sentences. If people notice and commend you, are those the things you should do? “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”—then what they know may hurt them? Then elective ignorance is helpful? ...