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Thirst
They are all older than me —
the mountains, seas, trees.
They hold the wisdom of the years,
the secrets to survive.
They know not to fret
over small things,
that the world goes on around them
crazy and blind.
They remain steadfast in presence,
all drinking from the same pool —
the one at the center of the universe,
the one offering me a sip.
- Sherrie Lovler
The Rise of Stone
Once in a cool June wood
I saw scattered rocks roll slowly uphill --
gravity’s undoing in the hush of noon
The mirage persisted until my mind
shifted to another circuit
and I remembered we were rock once
ground to dust over the eons,
somehow spiraled into flesh and bone,
given the power to create
and to destroy, to rise and fall
so I followed the rocks uphill and
found a massive boulder near the crest,
a monument to Time’s compression
urging me to climb its creviced flank
and perch on a smooth shoulder
Distant hills flowed like violet silk
between green fields and endless sky
A jay flew in, curled its feet around a branch
while its feathers pulled blue from rays of
light that sped through galaxies,
to bind the jay and me in mutual beholding
of sentient life unfolding,
vassals to the realm of leaves
vessels anchored in an Earth-bound
sea of mortal breath
- Cynthia Poten
What I Wanted
Why is it that people always say,
“I wanted to ask you”...or
"I wanted to say"...or
"I wanted to suggest something else"?
I always wonder, "When did you
want that? Yesterday? Last week?
Last year? Or, maybe you mean it's a
Constant craving over a long piece of time?"
When I turn back to my monkey business,
People seem puzzled, mouths half-open.
"But," they will say, "I wanted..."
I reply, "Yes, yes...I heard you."
The past wants desperately to hold us,
As if with blindfolds and gags,
And lethal loyalty to old, old tales
Which actually died long, long ago.
Isn't it time now to stand up,
And step forward in the here and now?
To be present in your experience,
And finally say, if even a whisper: "I want."?
I hope so. Because if we ride on life's wagon,
Rolling like a stone to the next future,
And our feet hang low on the tailgait,
We will never see it coming.
- Jon Jackson
Naughty Negros
Those Negros weren’t acting right,
When peckerwoods ruled the land.
Back then, they said,
if the Mississippi River,
dried up one night,
The waking of the murdered black bodies,
Rising and walking
out of the holding,
gripping mud,
shaking off indignity;
slavery,
night riders,
humiliation,
rape,
sold down the river,
that silent line,
would wind from Natchez to
Detroit in the light.
What sounds would they make?
Pulling air into reborn
lungs, new breath,
moving wrapped and
fallow limbs like a chrysalis
breaking into
the light.
Free now.
What choice,
oh, naughty noble warrior,
Can you reveal to push
back
The night?
After slavery, some
deny and even glorify,
a period of lynching,
too gruesome a sight for
Lady peckerwoods dinner flight,
so, they came in the middle of the night.
Terror and fear geared to bringing
Power to those who happened to be
White. Oh, they were never
Close to God or being right.
Negros up and moved to the northern hoods.
Lynching and burning were not evident.
Ecology of Soul
We already know about
our dwindling environment
the dead seas
the polluted air
the disappearing species.
We are accomplished at
pointing fingers
putting off fixes, and
holding on to the
technological promise
of eventual solutions.
But what would happen
if we stopped looking outside
and started looking within.
The degradation of
our external world
is obviously taking a toll
on our physical being,
but what about
our ecology of soul?
Aren’t we living beyond
our means there as well.
- Rabon Saip
Pilgrimage
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Here, the Mississippi carved
its mud-dark path, a graveyard
for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
Here, the river changed its course,
turning away from the city
as one turns, forgetting, from the past—
the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
above the river's bend—where now
the Yazoo fills the Mississippi's empty bed.
Here, the dead stand up in stone, white
marble, on Confederate Avenue. I stand
on ground once hollowed by a web of caves;
they must have seemed like catacombs,
in 1863, to the woman sitting in her parlor,
candlelit, underground. I can see her
listening to shells explode, writing herself
into history, asking what is to become
of all the living things in this place?
This whole city is a grave. Every spring—
Pilgrimage—the living come to mingle
with the dead, brush against their cold shoulders
in the long hallways, listen all night
to their silence and indifference, relive
their dying on the green battlefield.
At the museum, we marvel at their clothes—
preserved under glass—so much smaller
than our own, as if those who wore them
were only children. We sleep in their beds,
the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped
in flowers—funereal—a blur
of petals against the river's gray.
The brochure in my room calls this
living history. The brass plate on the door reads
Prissy's Room. A window frames
the river's crawl toward the Gulf. In my dream,
the ghost of history lies down beside me,
rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.
- Natasha Trethewey
The Sorrow of Cement
We step on over around
The world, altered for our
Vision, improvement on
Perfection of stone, water, air.
The Spanish have a saying,
"Cogido con las manos
En la masa, "caught with our
Hands in the mix." This,
The corruption of our time.
Did the stone ask to
Be reduced to dust, mixed
With minerals, foreign or
Domesticated?
And what of the cattle, the chickens
All companions on this plain?
Their lives twisted, distorted
Lives without reach into lives
Meant to live.
Above jet tracks drawn
As though by a child
Wobble and widen.
Unnatural to the sky's
Forget-me-not blue
Trails of vaporous poison
Cursed, like Adam and Eve
First standing upright
Surveying their world.
Did they wonder then
How to improve, manipulate
Or simply to live alongside?
- Rebecca del Rio
"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
- Wendell Berry
September Tomatoes
The whiskey stink of rot has settled
in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises
when I touch the dying tomato plants.
Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms
flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots
and toss them in the compost.
It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.
My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village
as they pulled the flax. Songs so old
and so tied to the season that the very sound
seemed to turn the weather.
- Karina Borowicz
Shame on us
for silence on Palestine, Kashmir, Amazon, Bahamas, detention centers in US and much more
for letting our neighbor’s homes be demolished
for allowing fascist politicians to take over our countries
for merely paying lip service to our martyrs after they are killed
for saying prayers and then forgetting what they died for
Shame on us
for blaming the colonization for more than it is responsible for
for our own actions and lack of actions
for silence on the murder of Israa Gharib by her own family
..and many more beautiful girls for supposed “honor”
… no honor in brutal murder or in excusing it
Shame on us
for patriarchy and tribalism
for tossing trash into our streets
for not composting
for buying Israeli products while speaking of resistance
for tolerating corrupt leaders
for shaking hands with corrupt officials
for silence and for cajoling powers
Shame on us
for our self-imposed weakness and for lack of organizing
for not respecting law and order
for inactions and for apathy in the face of oppression
for believing in might instead of right
for letting down Basel Al-Araj, Bassam Aburahma
… and thousands more
Shame on us
for allowing Netanyahu to visit occupied Hebron
… leaving only a few young people challenging him
for letting self-appointed “leaders” attack Issa Amro and youth against settlements
for superstition and belief in a god who would save us
Shame on us
for “security coordination”
and for following orders
for accepting to be paid blood money to help the occupiers
for allowing a few bad apples spoil much of the population
for feeling helpless
and internalizing repression (mental colonization)
Shame on us
for lack of reading
for losing dignity
for ignoring
…our power to change
…our own history
….our rich canaanitic culture
…..our young minds
… suffering for so many people
Fellow human beings
…and the suffering of our planet
Home to fellow living things
Shame on us
for forgetting that Palestine was and is the country of beauty
…Of the Fertile Crescent
…Of the cradle of civilization
…Of successful resistance*
…Of miracles of rebirth
For forgetting that this planet earth is our only home
…home of good and bad
…home of Einstein and Ben Gurion
…Ibn Sina and Ibn Saud
…home of death and rebirth
…home our only home
- Mazin Qumsiyeh
"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
- Wendell Berry
What Happens When You Get Lost
Out in the mountains nobody gives you anything.
And you learn what the rules were after the game is over.
By then it is already night and it doesn’t make any difference
what anyone else is thinking or doing because now you have to
turn into an Indian.
You remember stories and now you know that the tellers were
part of all they told.
And everyone else was, and even you.
They’re all around you now, but if you’re afraid you will never find them.
And those questions that people always ask-
“What would you do if…”
They have their own answer right now- nothing.
Some things cannot be redeemed in a hurry no matter what the intentions are.
What could be done had to have been done a long time ago.
Because mistakes have consequences that do not just disappear.
If evil could be canceled easily it would not be very evil.
And so, the stars see you.
While you drift away they have their own courses and they watch you.
And listen, they already know your name.
- William Stafford
Fall
Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
- Edward Hirsch
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
- C.P. Cavafy
(Translation by Edmund Keeley)
I Didn’t Ask For My Parents
It isn’t like you bend
your dainty spirit neck
down from God’s baby-soul-land
and point to a copulating couple
who strike your fancy.
Don’t think it works that way.
You are blind-folded
and shot down through heaven’s tunnel
into life and where you plop
willy-nilly that’s your home.
The Jewish couple may be in the act
at the same time as their Muslim neighbor.
Where you end up
even the cherub who pushed you off
the edge can’t know.
We grow up forgetting
our incidental placements
become fond of whatever
bread and religion we are fed.
Listen,
Who has salvation
when we all claim it?
- Sholeh Wolpé
Love Can’t Wait
“That’s one small step for man;
one giant leap for mankind.”
Take a stand and end the war.
Which war you say?
Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt,
Libya, Syria, Iran?
It’s not the one you see out there:
It’s the one you can’t see in your own heart.
How do I do that? You ask.
Love this breath, your heart,
Find your true being.
Send love to yourself, to your neighbor &
when finally strengthened, you can, to the
very one who you believe irks you.
For the way to peace starts here: it's within.
This is “One giant leap”
human kind-ness.
- Muskie Fields
The Birthday of the World
On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding
of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.
No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?
How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where
have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke
the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling
my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.
- Marge Piercy
Having Come This Far
I've been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn't
I was never sure how I would get there
I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch
I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love
No longer do I hunt for targets
I've climbed all the summits I need to
and I've eaten my share of lotus
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice
I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life
I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I'd rather be blithe than correct
Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.
- James Broughton
The Conjugation of the Paramecium
This has nothing
to do with
propagating
The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission
(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)
The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing
But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:
The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium
Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged
for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other
This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.
- Muriel Rukeyser
Current Histories
The world you came out of
well to be fair
The World We came out of
is a cartography of abattoirs
everything eats everything
the eye that beholds
is more biome than human
and the greatest myth
we created
when forest spat savannah
but after feathered serpents
became pools of our own
undoing
A longgame revenge pact
extinction on extinction on extinction
back to basic building blocks
Try Again! Try Again! Try Again!
Till some combination of clay
creates a clockwork creature
a symboless golem or rather
Until micro self-organizes
reinvents macro and for a
moment forgets
later
off course
We remember
No
difference
between sense making primates
a carrot a clam a cicada a currant
except in expression
Now show me
The Face
Before and
again After
We were Born.
- Juris Ahn
To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
Tumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
the racket in
the lugwork probably
rehearsing some
stupid thing I
said or did
some crime or
other the city they
say is a lonely
place until yes
the sound of sweeping
and a woman
yes with a
broom beneath
which you are now
too the canopy
of a fig its
arms pulling the
September sun to it
and she
has a hose too
and so works hard
rinsing and scrubbing
the walk
lest some poor sod
slip on the
silk of a fig
and break his hip
and not probably
reach over to gobble up
the perpetrator
the light catches
the veins in her hands
when I ask about
the tree they
flutter in the air and
she says take
as much as
you can
help me
so I load my
pockets and mouth
and she points
to the step-ladder against
the wall to
mean more but
I was without a
sack so my meager
plunder would have to
suffice and an old woman
whom gravity
was pulling into
the earth loosed one
from a low slung
branch and its eye
wept like hers
which she dabbed
with a kerchief as she
cleaved the fig with
what remained of her
teeth and soon there were
eight or nine
people gathered beneath
the tree looking into
it like a
constellation pointing
do you see it
and I am tall and so
good for these things
and a bald man even
told me so
when I grabbed three
or four for
him reaching into the
giddy throngs of
yellow-jackets sugar
stoned which he only
pointed to smiling and
rubbing his stomach
I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
like there was a baby
in there
it was hot his
head shone while he
offered recipes to the
group using words which
I couldn’t understand and besides
I was a little
tipsy on the dance
of the velvety heart rolling
in my mouth
pulling me down and
down into the
oldest countries of my
body where I ate my first fig
from the hand of a man who escaped his country
by swimming through the night
and maybe
never said more than
five words to me
at once but gave me
figs and a man on his way
to work hops twice
to reach at last his
fig which he smiles at and calls
baby, c’mere baby,
he says and blows a kiss
to the tree which everyone knows
cannot grow this far north
being Mediterranean
and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
of Jordan and Sicily
but no one told the fig tree
or the immigrants
there is a way
the fig tree grows
in groves it wants,
it seems, to hold us,
yes I am anthropomorphizing
goddammit I have twice
in the last thirty seconds
rubbed my sweaty
forearm into someone else’s
sweaty shoulder
gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
on Christian St.
in Philadelphia a city like most
which has murdered its own
people
this is true
we are feeding each other
from a tree
at the corner of Christian and 9th
strangers maybe
never again.
- Ross Gay
October
Light in leaves in wind in sky.
Bright October brings beauty
to dead things
and the wingless learn
to fly.
Berries try to stash the summer
in their skin.
Squirrels bury food
and future forests.
Flowers fall back into all
the abundance that birthed
them and decay
paves the way for life
upon life.
When our dreams fall
we might recall
that forests are fed
by the fallen.
What we call death is only
the birth
of bodies and dreams
without boundaries.
What we call death is only
the discovery
that we belong
to the beauty
that burns in all beings.
- Bernadette Miller
The Last Thing
First there was the blue wing
of a scraggly loud jay tucked
into the shrubs. Then the bluish-
black moth drunkenly tripping
from blade to blade. Then
the quiet that came roaring
in like the R. J. Corman over
Broadway near the RV shop.
These are the last three things
that happened. Not in the universe,
but here, in the basin of my mind,
where I’m always making a list
for you, recording the day’s minor
urchins: silvery dust mote, pistachio
shell, the dog eating a sugar
snap pea. It’s going to rain soon,
close clouds bloated above us,
the air like a net about to release
all the caught fishes, a storm
siren in the distance. I know
you don’t always understand,
but let me point to the first
wet drops landing on the stones,
the noise like fingers drumming
the skin. I can’t help it. I will
never get over making everything
such a big deal.
- Ada Limón
When I Am Among The Trees
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
- Mary Oliver
Reconsider your broken heart
Turn back and reconsider your broken heart
Reconsider your brokenness
When the vase tumbles from the counter
And breaks beyond repair
You reach for the rose, the iris, the ferns
Pull them from the wreckage of glass
Place them lovingly into a new vase
The flowers reconfigure into a new formation
Perhaps more beautiful than before
Refreshed and rearranged
Flowers that once thrust their roots down into the earth
Gain strength from their arduous
Search for nourishment through hard clay and stones
Plucked from their habitat, resilient
They reach anew to morning rays
You are not your brokenness any more than
the flowers are the broken vase
When life leaves you cracked and scarred
You can become sharp, frayed, rigid
Instead love the disrepair of your heart
Let your roots find nourishment in
Faith and love and trust
When you reach for your desires you must
Break free from beliefs that hold you back
Most importantly the belief that you are broken
In any form
Consider your heart strong or weak,
Open or closed, scarred or beautiful
Cracked or pristine but
Do not consider your heart to be broken
At least not broken beyond use
Break up with your self-imposed ruler
Break your rules
Break your vows
Break open
Break open again
Break everything but your heart
- Sally Churgel
Some Things I Want to Remember Before Burning
Maybe its silly to think of
Venice in those tiny cordial cups
one red one gold like the fire
of one love before it burned out
the old ceramic bowl that sang
when you turned it with your fingers
and the time we fought
over its purchase and purpose
5 skulls in porcelain, differing in heights
each with visions scrawled on their backs
and one with a penis we never used
The House That Holds The Sparrows Nest I heard singing
framed in tonal monotype
but I never saw the bird,
Fly Fly Away painted on a long rectangle
in abstract red pink blue & white
stunned every time over conversation
and how it was won,
a hot orange dish brimmed
with many places I called home
rocks crystals and minerals
from long desert roads and unbroken shores of water,
in the guest room images of a barn, an icy lake
and a molten candle dimly illuminating fruit,
prim apples and the incandescent skin of grapes
each painted with grandmother’s careful hands
her old car parked in faded yellow and rusted
near the periwinkle hydrangea blooming full
all in graphite pencil
These many things of personal history
now a finality of ash,
somehow are rebuilt into time
burnt in the mind and somehow
indelibly, they carry on.
- Danielle Bryant
The Book of Lies
I’d like to have a word
with you. Could we be alone
for a minute? I have been lying
until now. Do you believe
I believe myself? Do you believe
Yourself when you believe me? Lying
is natural. Forgive me. Could we be alone
forever? Forgive us all. The word
is my enemy. I have never been alone;
bribes, betrayals. I am lying
even now. Can you believe
that? I give you my word.
- James Tate
Wait
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
- Galway Kinnell
The Dream Catcher Restaurant
Sault Ste Marie, Michigan
An Elder woman seated across the aisle from us
Having brunch with a girlfriend
Her jacket is draped over a chair
On her jacket are a moose, deer
An eagle flies overhead. On a clear blue lake cries the loon
I am back in the North Lakes, wood region
I hear a faint background of seventies music :
Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, Gordon Lightfoot
Mellisa Manchester, Johnny Cash
Our waitress keeps pouring refills while
My husband is making travel arrangements
On his smart phone
Her jacket calms my racing mind
I think back to waking up an early morning
At our family cabin in Northern Minnesota
Sitting at the dock with a cup of hot chocolate
Reading second-hand, ear-marked, paper backs
While listening to the loons, in the far off distance
After a morning dip
I was a late teen and care-fee then. A dreamer
I'd wonder often about that big world out there of
Infinite possibilities
Will I go to college? What will I study?
Where will I live? Will I get married and have children?
Will I be a drifter?
The road of my childhood was never a straight line
My studies and variety of jobs took me far from the lake
To distant places of no return
I was brave and foolish then, it is a small miracle
I am not dead. I play it safe now
And worry more than I should
What happened to that care-free teen at the lake?
The woman across the aisle
Stood up and put her jacket on
The jacket with the moose, deer, eagle and loon
At the lake
She turned around and gave me a curious smile
And walked away.
- Patricia LeBon Herb
Character, in time
The ancient mountain king
presides quietly in summer sun
and shakes shaggy limbs
in winter winds -
having long forgotten
youthful dreams:
the earnest pursuit of self
in a tidy, upright
but tender spire
aspiring to the sky
before time and the weather
cut here, on his windward side.
A lightning strike;
a cold snap perhaps
and the main shoot died.
But life goes on where it can
becoming a complex and contorted
monument to persistence, resistance
and the slow surrender
to whatever character
becomes in time.
- Carne Lowgren