Celebrating National Poetry Month: Poem #1

"Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, National Poetry Month (NPM) brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events." To learn more about National Poetry Month and a whole lot of other valuable information about poetry go to www.poets.org .

Today begins National Poetry Month. As I did last year, I will be posting a poem a day to celebrate the art and beauty of poetry. You can view thirty diverse poems in my April 2007 archives. I will introduce thirty new ones this year.

Today, as I continue to enjoy the quiet surrounding of Lake Chelan in central Washington state, this poem was very appropriate.

Lake Chelan

They call it regional, this relevance-

the deepest place we have: in this pool forms

the model of our land, a lonely one,

responsive to the wind. Everything we own

has brought us here: from here we speak.

The sun stalks among these peaks to sight

the lake down aisles, long like a gun;

a ferryboat, lost by a century, toots

for trappers, the pelt of the mountains

rinsed in the sun and that sound.

Suppose a person far off to whom this lake

occurs: told a problem, he might hear a word

so dark he drowns an instant, and stands dumb

for the centuries of his country and the suave

hills beyond the stranger’s sight.

Is this man dumb,

then, for whom Chelan lives

in the wilderness? On the street you’ve seen

someone like a trapper’s child pause,

and fill his eyes with some irrelevant flood-

a tide stops him, delayed in his job.

Permissive as a beach, he turns inland,

harks like a fire, glances through the dark

like an animal drinking, and arrives along that line

a lake has found far back in the hills

where what comes finds a brim gravity exactly requires.

William Stafford 1914-1993