For The Best Friend

Two by William Stafford

Practice

When you stop off at rehearsal you can stumble
and still be forgiven. Your shadow practices. A light
says, "Good, good," where the piano meditates
with its wide grin, maintaining order as usual
but already trembling for time to go again.

Outside the hall a monstrous Oregon night
moans with its river of wind. It stumbles. Lights
flicker,and your shadow joins everything that ever
failed in the world, or triumphed unknown, alone,
wrapped in that secret mansion where genius lives.

Maybe it is all rehearsal, even when practice
ends and performance pretends to happen in the light
that remembers more than it touches, back through all
the rows and balcony tiers. Maybe your stumbling
saves you, and that sound in the night is more than the wind.

********************************************

Thinking About Being Called Simple By a Critic

I wanted the plums, but I waited.
The sun went down. The fire
went out. With no lights on
I waited. From the night again--
those words: how stupid I was.
And I closed my eyes to listen.
The words all sank down, deep
and rich. I felt their truth
and began to live them. They were mine
to enjoy. Who but a friend
could give so sternly what the sky
feels for everyone but few learn to
cherish? In the dark with the truth
I began the sentence of my life
and found it so simple there was no way
back into qualifying my thoughts
with irony or anything like that.
I went to the fridge and opened it--
sure enough the light was on.
I reached in and got the plums.