Thursday Poem - Assurance

You will never be alone, you hear so deep

a sound when autumn comes. Yellow

pulls across the hills and thrums,

or the silence after lightening before it says

its names—and then the clouds' wide-mouthed

apologies. You were aimed from

birth: you will never be alone. Rain

will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,

long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,

moss on rock, and years. You turn your head—

that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.

The whole wide world pours down.

William Stafford, from The Way It Is