Lit Instructor
Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,
And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.
Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
it bites like a saw into white pine.
I communicate right; but explain to the dean--
well, Right has a long and intricate name.
And the saying of it is a lonely thing.
--William Stafford
8 comments:
beautiful stuff! thanks for sharing..
hotline & harmony,
~jeffrey
Love that poem. Love that picture. Dorothy called me last night. mmmmm! I cannot believe how old she sounded and the fact that she is entering FOURTH GRADE. I mean... I'm twenty. That is also weird. Anyways, lovely girls/words.
auhhhh... i love all this stafford.
ya know, your name came up in my therapy office today. i had a sweet little 16 year old that goes to BGA. she has not, to date, studied under your tutelage, but reported very good things via her classmates. sounds like you're pretty popular.
see you later.
oh lovely muses they are with their appley cheeks and winsome eyes! thankful you shared the moment.
Thank you Jeffrey, Melissa, Angela, and Anna, for paying attention. I think I'm going to stay with Stafford for a good long time. Let the record show that one Steve Mason secured that wonderful image with his uncanny camera skills.
I want to be a lit instructor.
that's a good one to be sure. the saying of it is something i'm not sure i ever got close to and so (partly) why i have given up the job entitled 'teaching'.
very glad you posted this picture. i've been needing to see the hair. lovely.
looking forward to seeing you soon.
er
ah
ummm
hmmm
seems to me
all things considered
and not with standing
be that as it may
we can safely say
the saying of it
is what counts,
the SAYING I said,
not the said
”Saying as testimony precedes all the said” E. Levinas
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