I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed. - Mary Oliver

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.

But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple — or a green field — a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing — an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness — wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak — to be company.

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones–inkberry, lamb’s quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones–rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. Attention is the beginning of devotion.

لا أريد أن أتساءل في حيرة
هل صنعت شيئا من حياتي،
لا..
لا أريد..
أن أتحسر أو أخاف،
أو أن أغوص في جدال.
أنا فقط أريد..
ألا ينتهي بي المطاف..
كعابرة سبيل... في هذه الحياة.