Copper-coated copter flies with intention.
He knows just where he is headed,
no energy-bleeding, hope-wasting hither and thither.
His aim is there—
that slit of space formed by the incomplete union of two elderly deck planks.
The tiny-waisted tiny being glides inside.
Blackness welcomes him home.
Safe, safe, safe.
Rest! rest! rest!
(I know I am Nobody’s poet—And still!)
God, I want to be that wasp.
Some accuse me of morbidity, their assertion supported by a scaffold of dark twigs; my fondness for cemeteries and storms, my ubiquitous clothing choice in the color without color, my reliance upon heavy literature, my collection of dying words. I wish that I might lend them my lens, an owl bestowing her nighttime sight to the worshippers of the sun, that they might see beyond the limits of labels to the radiant core of all—Beauty.
Who is it? Who is it?
~Billy the Kid
Does nobody understand?
~James Joyce
The sadness will last forever.
~Vincent van Gogh
Paris itself represents the timeless values of human progress.
Those who think that they can terrorize the people of France or the values that they stand for are wrong.
~President Barack Obama
Paris has long been my ideal. While I concede that my love for Paris is romantic, mine is not a postcard passion prompted by landmarks or lovers or croissants. It is true love, borne of reverence and gratitude for liberty pledged to tolerance and humane consciousness.
I read the news now. Every day.
There was a period when I covered my eyes with my hands, as a child hoping that the fright will vanish if she does not look. I put on the blindfold after Peter got sick and died. Peter told us that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer as if confessing to a crime. He said that he had been weak during his constant coverage of the September 11 attacks and had succumbed to smoking again. I wanted to say, “Peter, you are not weak. There is no shame in being sick. You are magnificent.”
Baby Honey died yesterday. “Baby Honey,” an apparent misnomer, as she was the sovereign grown-up and her temperament was not an easy and recognizable sweet. Baby Honey was a strong, old-fashioned, hat-wearing, proper, church-going, God-loving woman. And yet, as I mine memory, I realize that her name is indeed fitting, for thoughts of Baby Honey are inseparable from the sweet, verdant scent of Easter Sunday.