Online and Hyperbolic

Some things get exaggerated to get noticed. I like exaggeration, the grosser the better. The grossest, that infant of opinion, if not infantile, is the list. To wit, here are the Top Three Comments about the Internet. #1 It is the marketplace not of information but rather attention. Eighty million websites and what shall we see? Interested in #2 and #3? Of course you are.

I like such lists. They draw my attention. Lists can be poems, a sort of category easily accessed by beginners. Like list the colors of the things you love. The black and white of words on a page. The green confident fairway. And so on.

I searched for a William Stafford list poem, unsuccessfully. No matter. It's been raining here, a few miles from one of Stafford's more famous efforts.


"undisguised rhetorical tricks we might prefer cloaked with artifice" doesn't apply to Stafford, necessarily.


Traveling Through The Dark


Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.