Thursday Poem - Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep

a sound when autumn comes. Yellow

pulls across the hills and thrums,

or the silence after lightening 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, (from The Way It Is)

For my little brother James (Jamie) Brendan Franklin,
March 10, 1960 - August 22, 2023