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Published: Tue Jul 1 2008
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convertiendse en Characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
Wind Gift

For you, something not put
_        _even in prayer.
Like broad wings that swim thick
_        _under your fall
And won’t let you drop
_        _through the air.

Or the same thing under the sea
_        _where your boat goes.
A teeming companionship
_        _of life too full for a hollow
—the way a canyon’s alive
_        _when it snows.

That’s the way, under and over
_        _and all around—
Miraculous out of the void
_        _All for you—
_        _so wild the eye roves
_        _wing, fin, flake
_        _nor touches the ground.

William Stafford (1914–1993) was the author of many widely admired volumes of poetry and prose. He won the National Book Award for his poetry collection Traveling through the Dark and served as consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress—the position now known as poet laureate of the United States.

Stafford’s The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems was reviewed in AGNI 49 by Eric McHenry.

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