River poetry

The Skagit River
Newhalem, Washington
October 2011

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

By William Stafford

When we were in Winthrop last weekend, we took Nova down to the banks of the Chewuch River that runs through the back of town. There we saw this plaque where a beautiful poem by William Stafford was "published." Seven of his poems were selected by the forest service after two rangers wrote and asked him to provide words for interpretive signs on public lands. In the summer of 1994, a year after his death, William Stafford's Methow River poems were installed on roadside plaques around the valley. Of course, the river in the poem doesn't belong to any particular place or time. These were Stafford's last poems, and were later published by Confluence Press as the Methow River Poems.

Pondering the Snoqualmie River
Snoqualmie, Washington
August 2011