Help From Anywhere

Listen, ears: when the sun came up

you didn't tell me. When the eloquent

lecturer came you were worse than nothing.

But the eyes - when they turn, whatever

else

is there appears. They know a corner,

and they know the sun, that glorious

prayer it says. Under the pouring light

comes a sound: being. Deaf to all else

I lean where anything calls, to belong.

Wherever the world is, I wait there,

faithfully - sound, sight, thought -

giving it all the help I can. Poem by William Stafford was first published in the Monitor in 1977.