One Source Of Bad Information
There’s a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl.

This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
“Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.”

You live with this child, but you don’t know it. 
You’re in the office, yes, but live with this boy 
At night. He’s uninformed, but he does want

To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy 
You survived a lot. He’s got six big ideas.
Five don’t work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.
Clothespins
I’d like to have spent my life making
Clothespins. Nothing would be harmed,
Except some pines, probably on land
I owned and would replant. I’d see
My work on clotheslines near some lake, 
Up north on a day in October,
Perhaps twelve clothespins, the wood 
Still fresh, and a light wind blowing.
Why We Don’t Die
In late September many voices 
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it. That coolness. 
All of them are right.

Our many souls — what 
Can they do about it? 
Nothing. They’re already 
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home 
Anyway. “It’s late,” they say. 
“Lock the door, let’s go.”

The body doesn’t agree. It says, 
“We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.
Let’s go get it.”
Things To Think
Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message 
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, 
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose 
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.
People Like Us
There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can’t remember 
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can’t remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It’s
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle 
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives, 
And he’s lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul, 
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you’re safe.

For James Wright

The poet William Stafford made a practice of writing a poem at the start of each day, before doing anything else. To honor Stafford after his death, Robert Bly adopted the same work habit. Each morning, he would not get out of bed until he completed a poem.

The poems on these pages were all written during that time and are reprinted from Morning Poems, by Robert Bly. © 1997 by Robert Bly. They appear here by permission of HarperCollins.

— Ed.