This Soldier Heart

This is a jagged tear, my friend
flesh torn of teeth and grit -
worn down to bone and break.
You think it will not pass,
that you won't survive
and I promise you, dear
I promise that you won't.

The you that you were before
is dead and gone to this world.
He could not survive through
this present grief.
Betrayal and hope are the bitterest of foes,
destined to share this fallow land
of our hearts.

But this field is where we warrior on,
every minute from now is hard fought victory,
the most important work we do.

Who will you build from these broken seas?
That man,
that man waits for you to find him.

Know that not now,
not tomorrow,
but further on
wholeness and love sit in silent expectation
for this soldier heart you will forge.

The Promise of Wings

Grief is this wet veil
that chokes the air of love from me
closing tight against my mouth -
a dying kiss.
I must let go of the dream of you,
all these things you never were,
all that I blindly hoped.
This death grows my second lungs
and stifling as the cocoon may be
there is a promise of wings,
of a world governed not by
the gravity of you.

Stafford

A flavor like wild honey begins

when you cross the river. On a sandbar

sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it

a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and so bold?

You forget about gold. You stare—and a flavor

is rising all the time from the trees.

Back from the river, over by a thick

forest, you feel the tide of wild honey

flooding your plans, flooding the hours

till they waver forward looking back. They can’t

return; that river divides more than

two sides of your life. The only way

is farther, breathing that country, becoming

wise in its flavor, a native of the sun

William Stafford

from The Way it Is: New and Selected Poems