William Stafford

Here you will find the Poem Walking West of poet William Stafford

Walking West

Anyone with quiet pace who 
walks a gray 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 gray 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-gray the sod goes under 
a river of wind, a hawk on a stick.