Darkness
The sun rose in the sky again this morning. Sometimes I wonder why it wants to rise And look at all the wrongs it has to see. Perhaps it doesn’t want to, and can’t help it, The way white people don’t want—I suppose— To be unkind, and yet can’t seem to help it. No, nothing […]
John Muir’s Water Ouzel
The psalmist of the waterfalls, It nests beside the mountain streams And in my musings often calls And often flashes through my dreams . . . I have not seen, I have not heard, The bird, not shall I hear or see, But Muir with many a reverent word Has loved it into life for […]
Working Knowledge
A human being needs some pride in knowing Some thing that he himself can verify, If it’s no more than the proper time for hoeing And planting beans, or how to still the cry Of newborn things; he needs decisive acts That keep his knowledge clear-cut and unblurred, To hold him steady in the midst […]