A Poem for Sunday

[intertext]

Because everyone's doing it...

Walking West

Anyone with quiet pace who
walks a grey road in the West
may hear a badger underground where
in deep flint another time is

Caught by flint and held forever,
the quiet pace of God stopped still.
Anyone who listens walks on
time that dogs him single file,

To mountains that are far from people,
the face of the land gone grey like flint.
Badgers dig their little lives there,
quiet paced the land lies gaunt,

The railroad dies by a yellow depot,
town falls away toward a muddy creek.
Badger-grey, the sod goes under
a river of wind, a hawk on a stick.

William Stafford