The Way It Is
Written by admin June 27th, 2008 in on the wayBy William Stafford
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Source: The Way It Is, New & Selected Poems
Exactly.
And yes, people don’t understand.
Stafford’s meditation on the thread prompts me to ponder my own thread. It is to ask, “Thy Will, not mine be done,” and then to listen and watch. Prefiguring the Christian thread, I was fascinated as a child by the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Theseus had heard that the labyrinth in which the Minotaur waited in the lair at the bottom could lead you in, but you could never find your way out. The Minotauer could torture you and devoir you at his leizure. Theseus took a sword with which to slay the Minotaur. And he got out. How? He also attached to the opening a strong, but tiny and nearly invisible, thread. When the Beast was dead, Theseus followed his thread back to safety.