Holy Saturday: On Tombs, Prisoners, and Antelopes in the Grass

On Christmas Day 2018, I opened a gift from my son, the junior high principal, the poet. It was a hardback edition of a William Stafford book of poetry (the softcover edition having been on my bookshelf for many years).

But this one different, and not just that its cover was hard. On the title page was Stafford’s signature, a luminous find in the mammoth Powell’s Bookstore of Downtown Portland – likely landing there after Stafford’s teaching career at local Lewis and Clark College.

Tears filled my eyes, because I have a son who thinks about these things, who loves poetry and literature.

And tears filled my eyes as I randomly opened the pages and read whatever my eyes fell upon, moved again by Stafford’s utter simplicity and by his way of jumping into the stream and letting the current take him wherever it would. He had no sense of building to a great crescendo in his poems, just tracking along to see where the poem led, as if each line were some golden thread which the reader could hold onto and trace to something else that might arise in his or her imagination.

I sat among grandchildren -- busily devouring gifts amidst loud laughter and chatter -- quietly reading along in Stafford, choking back the Christmas tears.

This is one of the poems that had my address on it, and still does . . . maybe because it explores themes I’ve often pondered for myself . . . and maybe because it is sufficiently unresolved to remind me of my life.

On this Holy Saturday, I give William Stafford’s poem about tight spaces, prisoners, and antelopes in the grass to you.


A Message from the Wanderer
William Stafford

Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occurred to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations –
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as – often, in light, on the open hills –
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then – even before you see –
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now – these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way –
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

[William Stafford, Stories That Could Be True (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 9.]

Good Friday: Praying with Psalm 14

Here is a psalm for prayer as you move into Good Friday.

Norman Fischer's book of psalms, Opening to You, combines beautiful poetry with a gentle spirit which renders the prayers in striking images. His work is my go-to when I want to see the psalms differently and pray them honestly. I highly recommend Opening to You.


Psalm 14
Norman Fischer


The useless fool says in his heart
“God is nothing”
People are corrupt, do only harm
Not one does good unselfishly, not one

You gaze down from the highest
Upon humankind in the middle
To see if there is one person with eyes
One with understanding
One capable of seeing your seeing

But they are all gone bad
All turned sour and blind
There is none who knows good
Not one

Is there not even a speck of understanding
In all the world of blind heedlessness
Among those who eat up others as if they were bread
And do not even know their own hearts
Or a single true word?

But they become terrified even within their terror
When they see you burning in the circle of goodness
Shining out of the eyes of the lowly and the poor
Showing your holiness in their defeat
Your invincible power at the center of their weakness

O that someone might come out of Zion
To bring freedom to the strugglers!

When you capture the people again
The sojourners will be glad
And the strugglers will rejoice with strong singing


[Norman Fischer, “Psalm 14,” Opening to You (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002), p. 17.]