Fine feathers, they say, make fine birds.
There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.
Poetry feels like a country I visit without a passport, where I look around furtively, grab hold of something precious, and try to smuggle it back across the border. Any poem I get written down feels like contraband to me.
It's what you do that makes your soul.
the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners
Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?
When I look out the window, I exhale a prayer of thanks for the color green, for my children's safety, for the simple acts of faith like planting a garden that helped see us through another spring, another summer. And I inhale some kind of promise to protect my kids' hopes and good intentions we began with in this country. Freedom of speech, the protection of diversity - these are the most important ingredients of American civil life and my own survival. If I ever took them for granted, I don't know.
Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, Nor age so eat up my invention, Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, But they shall find awaked in such a kind Both strength of limb and policy of mind, Ability in means, and choice of friends, To quit me of them throughly.
This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what`s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.
I don't want to have life figured out and then wonder, "What's next?" That seems scary to me.
I am wearing a vest. If I had no arms, it would be a jacket.