In Dear Detail, By Ideal Light

Painting by Rachelle Hynes



In Dear Detail, By Ideal Light


1.
Night huddled our town,
plunged from the sky.
You moved away.
I save what I can of the time.

In other towns, calling my name,
home people hale me dazed;
those moments we hold,
reciting in the evening.

Reciting about you receding
through the huddle of any new town.
Can we rescue the light
that happens, and keep on
happening, around us?

Gradually we left you there
surrounded by the river curve
and the held-out arms,
elms under the streetlight.

These vision emergencies come
wherever we go--
blind home
coming near at unlikely places.

2.
One's duty: to find a place
that grows from his part of the world--
it means leaving
certain good people.


William Stafford

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