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Now reading
Priest Lake
WILLIAM STAFFORD
PRIEST LAKE
How rich we were, to know them, exiles
in our century! Quiet as a bobcat
I come again to their lake, witness
for the jigsaw it takes: one by
one the oak leaves part and establish
their house, dreamed empty today by the careless.
Easy, they said, we tame birds can find
the marsh, the richer grain lavished
where mild wanderers can glean. And they let
this lake maintain them, summers, as they would.
In winter, snow and psychiatry took over. Their
cabin had an arm of the bay for porch.
There they spun. The country seldom
startled as a moose encountered them. Ignored,
they liked it impersonal, spoke German in presence
of the mountains. Now all the Rorschach lakes
deny their shorelines in blizzards, but I come
back, far down these evenings, faithful, to glean.