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1 " This choreography of ruin, the world breakinglike glass under a microscope,the way it doesn’t crack all at once,but spreads out from the damaged cavities.Still for a moment it all recedes.The backyard potatoes swell quietlyburied beneath their canopy of leaves.The wind rubs its hands through the trees. "
― Ellen Bass , Like a Beggar
2 " the dolphins stitch sky to sea. "
3 " When You ReturnFallen leaves will climb back into trees.Shards of the shattered vase will riseand reassemble on the table.Plastic raincoats will refoldinto their flat envelopes. The egg,bald yolk and its transparent halo,slide back in the thin, calcium shell.Curses will pour back into mouths,letters un-write themselves, wordssiphoned up into the pen. My gray hairwill darken and become the feathersof a black swan. Bullets will snapback into their chambers, the powdertamped tight in brass casings. Borderswill disappear from maps. Rustrevert to oxygen and time. The firereturn to the log, the log to the tree,the white root curled upin the un-split seed. Birdsong will flyinto the lark’s lungs, answersbecome questions again.When you return, sweaters will unraveland wool grow on the sheep.Rock will go home to mountain, goldto vein. Wine crushed into the grape,oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled into the spider’s belly. Night mothstucked close into cocoons, ink drainedfrom the indigo tattoo. Diamondswill be returned to coal, coalto rotting ferns, rain to clouds, lightto stars sucked back and backinto one timeless point, the way it wasbefore the world was born,that fresh, that whole, nothingbroken, nothing torn apart. "
4 " It's a hard time to be human. We know too muchand too little. "
5 " The World Has Need Of You”everything hereseems to need us —Rainer Maria RilkeI can hardly imagine itas I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancientprayer of my arms swingingin counterpoint to my feet.Here I am, suspendedbetween the sidewalk and twilight,the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.What if you felt the invisibletug between you and everything?A boy on a bicycle rides by,his white shirt open, flaringbehind him like wings.It’s a hard time to be human. We know too muchand too little. Does the breeze need us?The cliffs? The gulls?If you’ve managed to do one good thing,the ocean doesn’t care.But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,the earth, ever so slightly, felltoward the apple. "