Featured Book Friday: A Poem by David Wagoner

Last night, for the first time this spring, the pieces finally all fell into place. The hurricane winds in Rexburg stopped. The cold disappeared. My children went strait to bed, and the sun powered out enough of a dusky, orange glow that I could read outside.

I grabbed a book, headed for the back porch, and plunked down in a lawn chair. After a few minutes, the two neighborhood teenagers on motorcycles who, for hours, had been terrorizing the late afternoon stillness called it a day. Then, a previously distracted parent realized it was his child screaming bloody murder in the backyard and tended to her. The workmen down the street finished re-shingling a roof and loaded up their air compressors, nail guns, and radio.

All at once, engines rested. Doors closed. The sun began to set. And the day-people vanished.

Then, I read this poem ten times over, stopping again and again to think, to listen, and to breathe it in.

Thank heavens for moments of stillness.