Crossing Our Campground
by William Stafford
Part of the time when I move it’s for
Bret. On the path my feet nimble along,
avoiding a root, adjusting easily to some
rough place and lightly stepping on.
This is for you, Bret, I think; this
is the way an old man walks who still
stays vigorous and strong, firm, alert,
holding on through the years for you—
The kind of old man you could be,
or could have been.
Stafford wrote this poem about five years after his son Bret killed himself and just a few months before his own passing in 1993. I find it curiously moving how the role he has developed for himself as a kind of ordinary hero and model for the rest of us, as one who knows the better way, persists despite the catastrophe.
Readers my age (I'm almost seventy) will immediately link the title to Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar." We all took that in school way back when.
(I've copied this poem from The Way It Is, Graywolf Press, 1999. Of course I shall remove it should the copyright holder wish.)
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