The only relics left are those long <br />spangled seconds our school clock chipped out <br />when you crossed the social hall <br />and we found each other alive, <br />by our glances never to accept our town's <br />ways, torture for advancement, <br />nor ever again be prisoners by choice. <br /> <br /> <br />Now I learn you died <br />serving among the natives of Garden City, <br />Kansas, part of a Peace Corps <br />before governments thought of it. <br /> <br /> <br />Ruth, over the horizon your friends eat <br />foreign chaff and have addresses like titles, <br />but for you the crows and hawks patrol <br />the old river. May they never <br />forsake you, nor you need monuments <br />other than this I make, and the one <br />I hear clocks chip in that world we found.<br /><br />William Stafford<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/monuments-for-a-friendly-girl-at-a-tenth-grade-party/
