This is the poem I read at the start of things and at the end of things. I first encountered it when I friend sent it to me as a postcard when Stafford’s collected poems, The Way It Is, was published. I still have the postcard, but I’ve now dropped the poem into syllabi and read it at the close of a yoga class. When a new Free Minds group gathered this January, the first free write I gave them for my creative writing unit began with the prompt, “Starting here, what do you want to remember?”
“Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect you carry
wherever you go, right now?”
