Am I the Last One To Know About This?

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Apparently they don't talk about this on sites I frequent. But I was recently reading a blog of someone I don't really know who mentioned it. This internet thing really does brings us all together, right.

It's the last day of the month but I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and share one of my favorites. William Stafford is an amazing poet, so simple and clear but descriptive. And I have so many memories attached to him. My sophomore year in college, I took a poetry class and met a guy named Nathan, my official unrequited crush of 1992. He was from Portland, so beautiful, a renaissance man, loved science, our poetry professor actually had to tell him to stop turing in poetry he had turned in so much, and we could talk for hours. I later found out that he, of course, had a girlfriend. But he sparked the kindling of my interest in Oregon. He xeroxed William Stafford poems for me and every few weeks I got packets of them to pore over.

Enough about Nathan, let's get back to William, in the introduction to his collection of poems, An Oregon Message, he says, "I must be willingly fallible in order to deserve a place in the realm where miracles happen." Isn't that inspiring, that my failings, mistakes, and weaknesses allow me to be part of miracles.

So here's one of my favorites:

Why I Am Happy

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.