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How Did You Sleep?
Kim Stafford

We ask about the unknown,
the invisible, the forgotten.
We want to know the secret,
the intimate, the lost.

We don’t say, “How was
your waking?” No, we want
what can’t be told, the part
that’s blind, deaf, mythic.

Later, we can make small talk.
But first, before we surrender
to all that, and go to work,
we ask about the dark, the deep.

—
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and author of The Muses Among Us and Singer Come from Afar. He served as Oregon’s Poet Laureate from 2018-2020, and has taught writing in Mexico, Scotland, Italy, and Bhutan.

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