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 brother James Brendan Franklin
(March 10, 1960 - August 22, 2023