What If We Were Alone? - William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

What If We Were Alone?

What if there weren't any stars?
What if only the sun and the earth
circled alone in the sky?  What if
no one ever found anything outside
this world right here? -- no Galileo
could say, "Look -- it is out there,
a hint of whether we are everything."

Look out at the stars.  Yes -- cold
space.  Yes, we are so distant that
the mind goes hollow to think it.
But something is out there.  Whatever
our limits, we are led outward.  We glimpse
company.  Each glittering point of light
beckons: "There is something beyond."

The moon rolls through the trees, rises
from them, and waits.  In the river all
night a voice floats from rock
to sandbar, to log.  What kind of listening
can follow quietly enough?  We bow, and 
the voice that falls through the rapids
calls all the rocks by their secret names.

        - William Stafford

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