Excerpts from a William Stafford poem

You can’t tell when strange things with meaning
will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down
just the way it was.
 

“You don’t have to prove anything,”
my mother said. “Just be ready
for what God sends.”
I listened and put my hand
out in the sun again.

It was all easy.

[An excerpt from a poem composed the day Mr. Stafford died.]

Source: from “Are You Mr. William Stafford?” in The Way It Is, Selected Poems