The William Stafford poem I last put in the box got such a response that I left it up an extra week, letting its nine short lines have their say a little longer. I took it down about an hour before a series of tornadoes ripped through Central Texas, overturning semis and tearing roofs off houses. Given that Stafford places a tornado at the end of his first line, perhaps he should have been afforded a few more hours
But Ellen Bass picks up Stafford’s theme in “The Thing Is,” a poem that acknowledges all the dark and hard things central to our human experience and still urges that ultimately, we must come back to love. I think Stafford would agree
“Then you hold life like a face
between your palms”
