assurance

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You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says
its names — and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed apologies.

You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone.

Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles — you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head —that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.

The whole wide world pours down.


—William Stafford

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