Practicing the Complex Yes

by Kim Stafford

When you disagree with a friend,
a stranger, or a foe, how do you
reply but not say simply No?
For No can stop the conversation
or turn it into argument or worse —
the conversation that must go on, as a river
must, a friendship, a troubled nation.
So may we practice the repertoire
of complex yes:

Yes, and in what you say I see...
Yes, and at the same time...
Yes, and what if...?
Yes, I hear you, and how...?
Yes, and there’s an old story...
Yes, and as the old song goes...
Yes, and as a child told me once...
Yes. Yes, tell me more. I want to understand...
and then I want to tell you how it is for me....

From The Flavor of Unity: Post-Election Poems, by Kim Stafford (Little Infinities, 2018). Reprinted by permission of the author.