I appreciate how this poem by the much-beloved William Stafford grapples with the complexities we are ever grappling with — the way that life at any time is both beautiful and terrible, uncertain and fully realized in the moment. It is not a poem about how a war carries on in Ukraine while the redbuds begin their springtime display of fuchsia. But it very well could be.
“That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.”
