William Stafford

Here you will find the Poem Monuments For A Friendly Girl At A Tenth Grade Party of poet William Stafford

Monuments For A Friendly Girl At A Tenth Grade Party

The only relics left are those long 
spangled seconds our school clock chipped out 
when you crossed the social hall 
and we found each other alive, 
by our glances never to accept our town's 
ways, torture for advancement, 
nor ever again be prisoners by choice. 


Now I learn you died 
serving among the natives of Garden City, 
Kansas, part of a Peace Corps 
before governments thought of it. 


Ruth, over the horizon your friends eat 
foreign chaff and have addresses like titles, 
but for you the crows and hawks patrol 
the old river. May they never 
forsake you, nor you need monuments 
other than this I make, and the one 
I hear clocks chip in that world we found.