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Day after day up there beating my wings
with all the softness truth requires
I feel them shrug whenever I pause:
they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.
I dance my way toward the family of knowing,
embracing stray error as a long-lost boy
and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;
it bites like a saw into white pine.
I communicate right; but explain to the dean--
well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

By William Stafford

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Other poems by William Stafford:

• A Ritual To Read To Each Other
• Across Kansas
• Allegiances
• Ask Me
• Atavism
• For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
• Just Thinking
• Lit Instructor
• Notice What This Poem Is Not Doing
• Objector
• Remembering Mountain Men
• Security
• The Light By The Barn
• Thinking For Berky
• This Life
• Traveling Through The Dark
• Waking at 3 a.m.
• When I Met My Muse