William Stafford (1914–1993) was a prolific and celebrated American poet who wrote in a simple and unadorned style. He established his habit of rising early every morning to write during the 1940s when he lived with other conscientious objectors in work camps in Arkansas and California. After he was released, he taught creative writing for many years at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. James Finn Cotter wrote that Stafford's poems “reach out to the reader with a hand of trust and tenderness, time and again, in images that make small gestures large-hearted and full of importance.” This poem is from his collection The Way It Is (Graywolf, 1998). 

Selected by Amy Frykholm: amy@journeywithjesus.net