Find a railway dining car, made into a home
that’s parked at the heart of Aurora,
and a bay horse, one leg raised, asleep
tethered to the rail. If you follow
Main from there, you’ll find the garden
open dawn to dusk in the care of Mr. Epp
who’s out of town today, so you’ll not
hear the names ripple from his mouth,
the ones you memorized: pennyroyal,
mother-of-thousands, mother-of-thyme.
On a kind of yarrow, witness a spider,
the precise pollen-canary of its chosen flower,
drawing nectar from a bee, as the bee itself
drew from the flower, and the flower
from the rain.
At dusk, drive north toward the city
on old 99. You’ll meet the sign
for the town that failed and holds
like Aurora to its name. New Era,
all moss and fern.
Here comes the rain.
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, where he began teaching in 1979. He holds a PhD in medieval literature from the University of Oregon, and is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. He has worked as an oral historian, letterpress printer, photographer, teacher, and as the literary executor of the Estate of William Stafford. His book, Having Everything Right won a citation for excellence from the Western States Book Awards. His most recent books are Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford (Graywolf, 2002), and The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft (Georgia, 2003), as well as the edited collection, Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War (Milkweed, 2003). He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.