A Story That Could Be True

A Story That Could Be True


If you were exchanged in the cradle
and your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by--
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"--
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king."


William Stafford

Posted over on Break Out of the Box


William Stafford, Going Over to Your Place: Poems for Each Other (Selected by Paul B. Janeczko, Bradbury Press, New York)