Totem Bight State Park
A year before my father, the poet William Stafford, died in 1993, two enterprising Forest Rangers from the North Cascades in Washington State wrote and asked if he would furnish some poems for a wild idea they had: Poetry Road Signs. “When you pull off a mountain road,” one said, “it’s fine if a sign there says ‘The valley before you was sculpted by ice ten thousand years ago.’ But what if, instead, there was a poem that deepened the way you looked at the landscape? We want you to write some for us, and we’ll find a way to get them posted—permanently.”
My father told me then he thought this idea should take over the world. “There should be poems everywhere!” In the end, he sent in thirty poems, and seven were chosen and have been mounted along the North Cascades Highway, and down through the Methow Valley. At one spot I remember, a natural history sign tells about the riparian zone, the work of beaver, how they survive when the river freezes…while a companion sign has William Stafford’s poem “Ask Me”:
Sometime when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life….
A book is a great place to read a poem—but what about out there, where the river speaks, and the evening chill flavors the poem’s truth?
Among the William Stafford poems not used in the Methow project is one I have always loved. It’s so plain spoken, humble, friendly:
Emily, This Place, and You
by William Stafford
She got out of the car here one day,
and it was snowing a little. She could see
little glimpses of those mountains, and away down
there by the river the curtain of snow would
shift, and those deep secret places looked
all the more mysterious. It was quiet, you know.
Her life seemed quiet, too. There had been troubles,
sure—everyone has some. But now, looking out there,
she felt easy, at home in the world—maybe like
a casual snowflake. And some people loved her.
She would remember that. And remember this place.
As you will, wherever you go after this day,
just a stop by the road, and a glimpse of someone’s life,
and your own, too, how you can look out any time,
just being part of things, getting used to being a person,
taking it easy, you know.
I often include this poem when I share my father’s work, for its conversational tone, quiet compassion, and commitment to both earthly and human connections.
Many years after my father died, I got involved in the Poems in Place project in Alaska, a collaboration that drew together the Alaska State Parks, the Alaska Center for the Book, and other partners to install place-based poems by Alaska writers at resonant sites where wanderers might come upon them, and be “placed” by the harmonic witness of poem and land. The project was partly inspired by the Methow River project, but thoroughly Alaskan as well. As Oregon friend to this Alaska project, I would hear news intermittently about the selection process, and the events surrounding the installation of the signs. Then came a message that electrified me: a poem by Alaska poet Emily Wall had been chosen for the Totem Bight State Historical Park… and the title of her poem was hauntingly reminiscent of my father’s poem, “Emily, This Place, and You”: “This Forest, This Beach, You.”
I tracked down Emily, and she told me the following story: As a young writer, she had contacted William Stafford and asked if she might meet with him to talk about her writing. But when they got together, they spoke of life, seeking, struggle. He was kind to her, she said, and after he died she came across his poem about “Emily.” “Could that be about me?”
Years passed. She became more active as a writer, more confident, and when she submitted her poem to the Poems in Place project, it was chosen. This is what you will find by the water at Totem Bight State Historical Park:
This Forest, This Beach, You
by Emily Wall
If you were a cedar
you would be waiting for rain to fall
or fall harder, relaxing your ten thousand needles.
If you were a handful of moss
you would be waiting for the light so you could
climb further up this rich, fallen log.
If you were a blue mussel
you would be waiting for the tide to rise
to open your lips, to sip.
What a world this is.
Close your eyes and inhale. Eat a little
of this air. Let it fill your belly. Let the taste of this place
always rest on your tongue.
I love so many things about this story—an older writer helping a younger… the writing or poetry helping the struggling life… the homage of a living poet to one who is gone, even as she goes her own strong way… and especially the way a poem in place can testify for our connections over time, in place, and to kindred souls. Full circle, a writer’s vocation may reach far beyond the individual life.
From now until April 1, 2015 the Poems in Place project is seeking poems for Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park, Kodiak, and for Caines Head State Recreation Area, Seward. For more information, to see current poems in place, or to access rules and entry forms for this year’s Poem in Place invitation, please see: http://www.alaskacenterforthebook.org/