I begin with love, hoping to end there. I don’t want to leave a messy corpse.          I don’t want to leave a messy corpse        Full of medicines that turn in the sun.   Some of my medicines turn in the sun. Some of us don’t need hell to be good.    ...

In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking—they were both walking—north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He...

I have known only my own shallows— Safe, plumbed places, Where I was wont to preen myself. But for the abyss I wanted a plank beneath And horizons... I was afraid of the silence And the slipping toe-hold... Oh, could I now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve...

We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know...

Thirteenth amendment couldn’t protect us from the war on drugs, after our leaders were jailed or shot our country pressed its fingers up against our spine but you should know we still want a new flag: Brave Like Martin Bronze Lit Movement Beautiful Like Malcolm...

When Laurens van der Post one night In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen He couldn't hear the stars Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him, half-smiling. They examined his face To see whether he was joking Or deceiving them. Then two of those small...

It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there...

What makes a nation's pillars high And its foundations strong? What makes it mighty to defy The foes that round it throng? It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand Go down in battle shock; Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, Not on abiding rock. Is it the sword? Ask the...

I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving...

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the...