By the Snake River

By the Snake River


"There is, in fact, being demanded from the
will that which our conditions of life
refuse to allow." ---Albert Schweitzer


Something sent me out
in those desert places
to this apparition river
among the rocks,
because what I tried to carry
in my hands was all spilled from
jostling when I went among people
to be one of them.

This river started among such mountains
that I look up to find those valleys
where intentions were--before they
flowed in the kind of course
the people would allow; where I was
a teacher, a son, a father, a man.

Hills lean away from the loss
of this river, while it draws on lakes
that hang still among clouds,
for its variable journey among
scars and lava, exiled
for that time from all green
for days, and seeking along sandbars
of bereavement at night.

This river is what tawny is and
loneliness, and it comes down with
a wildnerness of power. Now and then
begging along a little green island
with lush water grass among the rocks
where I have watched it
and its broken shells.

The desert it needs possesses too
my eyes whenever they become most
themselves to find what I am,
among sights given by chance,
while I seek among rocks,
while the deep sturgeon move
in this water I lift
pouring through my hands.


William Stafford

Posted over on William Stafford Archives