Poet William Stafford--An Intercultural Homage

As much as I am focused on issues of race and biracial and bicultural identity in my writing and also in what I read, I read cross-culturally.  It's National Poetry Month and I want to share one of my favorite poems from one of my favorite poets.  William Stafford was an amazing poet who wrote about the everyday, the small moments that add up to become our lives.  Not even in my all-things-black days--when my reading was a steady diet of African-American and female minority writers, could I resist Stafford's style.  His poems draw you into life.  See what I mean?:

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

~ William Stafford ~