“Sometime when the river is ice ask me about the mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thoughts, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.”

William Stafford wrote these lines. I found his slim book of poetry on a local library shelf. I had not heard of him, and wasn’t particularly looking for another man’s musings on the state of the world. In fairness I don’t know what I am looking for these days. But I opened the book up to the opening stanza of “Ask Me.” And I promptly felt assaulted by my own shortcomings.

Is the life i have led mine? Have I allowed it to be written by the circumstances I have encountered rather than the ones I have sought? Yes. How does one realistically go about firing the ghost writer if the ghost writer is your life’s circumstances?

The mistakes I have made…do I consider them? Not often.
Do I still make them? Repeatedly. Then why have I been so slow to address them? What if the mistakes are not the main problem, only ineffective stabs at solutions?

The friends who help – what difference have they made? And before asking that should I not ask myself, ‘have I fully allowed them?’

And of those who have hurt – did I forgive them too quickly? Or did I willfully forget rather than forgive? Was this the easier path? How much does it matter?

There is community. But paramount there is self. Looking at our collectivity can be a balm but rarely does it provide an individualized answer. Unless that answer is letting go with a passivity that destroys the still unacknowledged self. That, to this old self, doesn’t feel right.

What of the wonders outside of self? I can envision Stafford’s icy river disguising the current below. Stafford confidently states “What the river says, that is what I say.” Well what does the river say? Stafford explains “…the comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness.”

It sounds so encouragingly whole – the river contains what has come before and what will come after. But the stillness, this ice, is it not nature’s attempt to stop forward movement? I realize it is a metaphor: a seasonal pause standing in for a human recess. But isn’t the ice also a disguiser, a preventer and a cold reminder of unchangeable currents?

No need to “Ask Me.” It has literally and figuratively all been said before.