For the Sake of Strangers BY DORIANNE LAUX

No matter what the grief, its weight, we are obliged to carry it. We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength that pushes us through crowds. And then the young boy gives me directions so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open, waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through All day it continues, each kindness reaching toward another- a stranger singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees offering their blossoms, a child who lifts his almond eyes and smiles. Somehow they always find me, seem even to be waiting, determined to keep me from myself, from the thing that calls to me as it must have once called to them this temptation to step off the edge and fall weightless, away from the world.

San Antonio by Naomi Shihab Nye

San Antonio Tonight I lingered over your name, the delicate assembly of vowels a voice inside my head. You were sleeping when I arrived. I stood by your bed and watched the sheets rise gently. I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms. It was then I knew, like a woman looking backward, I could not leave you, or find anyone I loved more. -- Naomi Shihab Nye, from Is This Forever, or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas.

Calling All Grandmothers by Alice Walker

We have to live differently. or we will die in the same old ways. Therefore I call on all Grand Mothers everywhere on the planet to rise and take your place in the leadership of the world. Come out of the kitchen out of the fields out of the beauty parlors out of the television Step forward and assume the role for which you were created: to lead humanity to health, happiness and sanity. I call on all the Grand Mothers of Earth and every person who possesses the Grand Mother Spirit of respect for life and protection of the young to rise and lead. The life of our species depends on it. & I call on all men of Earth to gracefully and gratefully stand aside & let them (let us) do so.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry by Howard Nemerov, (1920 – 1991)

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned to pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn't tell. And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don’t I know you? say no. When they invite you to the party remember what parties are like before answering. Someone is telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate. Then reply. If they say We should get together say why? It’s not that you don’t love them anymore. You’re trying to remember something too important to forget. Trees. The monastery bell at twilight. Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store nod briefly and become a cabbage. When someone you haven’t seen in ten years appears at the door, don’t start singing him all your new songs. You will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time. Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Far Corner Books, 1995)

The Wasted Years by Karin Gottshall

The wasted years were filled with movies, dreams about Venice, bread and raspberry jam. A hundred books that drifted by like laundry blown loose from the line, their pages unmarked and remembered only vaguely. I fell asleep reading. I listened to Verdi and whole afternoons were gone. I worked: boxing chocolate, sweeping floors, asking would you like whipped cream on that? There were dogs and cats: I looked into their faces. I thought if I’d been a painter I would have purpose now: I would paint saints, I would paint insects, I would paint the coffee shop filled with ghosts in the morning. I went to art supply stores and smelled the charcoal, bought myself thick blank books that were never filled. My shoes wore out and I found another pair just the same. My recipe for peace was a baked pear and my remedy for sorrow was a smoke. My friends called at regular intervals and we spoke about the past as though it were a puzzle we’d yet to solve. I lay in the sun and didn’t care what happened. Birdsong poured like sticky liquid from the trees and stuck one moment to the next, and I felt my life adhere and slide like syrup as I fell asleep under the thousand shades of green.

Return (For Ellen) -- Daniel Halpern

Come back again and again, the fields no longer hold their colors on limbs of light over the earth, under the sky, over the soft dicondra, the clover and weeds that spread, that pressed their dark root systems into the rich fields. The old neighbors have passed quietly into the earth. Your family has broken down and is traveling. Still, this is where your mouth in humor first closed over the mouth of the girl who lived behind you, where you learned to live poised on the edge of talking. Come back, the fields are gone and your friends are gone, the girl behind you has married into another city, the roads out of town are direct now and fast, and everyone you knew is gone, or no longer wants to know you. But you must return, back to the long stretch of main street reaching across the entire length of the valley, back to the mild, mid-winter days around Christmas, back to what is now only remembered because nothing is the same here anymore. There are no fields, nothing edible on the land anymore–only the traffic moving this way, then back again, then back again. The light is no longer reflected in the earth but you return because there is always something that survives: come back again to old friends living against dark fields, come back again, the family holding dinner for you, come back, come back again.