Intro to William Stafford, Poet and Pacifist
Brian Nixon has written a great introduction to poet and Brethren Church member William Stafford today on the ASSIST News website. Nixon writes, “I have found Stafford, through his poetry, to be a gentle reminder that there is another way of living. And as Christians, we do, indeed, look for ‘another world instead’: the coming of God’s kingdom, the establishment of His world, a dream that is really a reality yet unseen.”
He shared this poem from Stafford’s collection Scripture of Leaves, that I also wanted to pass along:
Reading The Big Weather
Mornings we see our breath. Weeds
sturdy for winter are waiting down
by the tracks. Birds, high and silent,
pass almost invisible over town.
Time, always almost ready
to happen, leans over our shoulder reading
the headlines for something not there. “Republicans
Control Congress”— the year spins on unheeding.
The moon drops back toward the sun, a sickle
gone faint in the dawn; there is a weather
of things that happen too faint for the headlines,
but tremendous, like willows touching the river.
This earth we are riding keeps trying to tell us
something with its continuous scripture of leaves.
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Thanks for this, Steve.