Visions Poem by David Cox

BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD

1
Once in Mexico an old man was
leading on a string—was it a cat?
And we saw it was a tarantula
sidling along in the dust, writing
a message from God for people who
thought they knew where creature-life ended.

2
We came upon scenes like that,
the world back of a lurid pane of glass.
Like in Reno—they have emptied
Hollywood and ordered the extras and
the stars to go get married and divorced
in Reno, making up their stories as they
go and letting their little dogs
decide which machines or churches
to put nickels and dimes into.

3
One day in a cut quick to the bone it was
white, white; and then the world came in.
I got a tourniquet going, but the snow
had learned a whole new way to look at the sky,
as in Maryland in the red fields, how the stones
come startlingly white, on the battlefields,
the cemeteries, along the gouged-out roads.
There history blows about on dandelion seeds.

4
On the plains near Wakeeney, above the ground,
short of the earth, at the level of the eyes,
a sunset ray extended for miles. We drove along
it, and let our thoughts down gingerly
to touch what happened, where Genevieve
lived. She went out of the world, for death.
Her town holds quiet in the big plain.
Lights witness one by one all over what
still abides. There was no one better.
Her town, her town, her town, the tires
repeat as we go by.

5
For those my friends who want me to know,
to discover and combine: all my best thoughts
I roll up and let fall carelessly. It is
better than no one follow even the pattern
I look onto the back of my hand, for many
visions I haven’t dared follow may
gather and combine in a flash. Away off.
in a space in the sky, I let the sky look
at me, and I look back and do not say anything.

(For the record this poem is by William Stafford and I could not find a way to put it under his name. It is the single greatest poem in all of time and I needed it on here)