“Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren”

“WordsBe careful of words,even the miraculous ones.For the miraculous we do our best,sometimes they swarm like insectsand leave not a sting but a kiss.They can be as good as fingers.They can be as trusty as the rockyou stick your bottom on.But they can be both daisies and bruises.Yet I am in love with words.They are doves falling out of the ceiling.They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.They are the trees, the legs of summer,and the sun, its passionate face.Yet often they fail me.I have so much I want to say,so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.But the words aren't good enough,the wrong ones kiss me.Sometimes I fly like an eaglebut with the wings of a wren.But I try to take careand be gentle to them.Words and eggs must be handled with care.Once broken they are impossiblethings to repair.”

“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

“The Witch's Life"When I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her.”

“Everyone in me is a birdI am beating all my wings”

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

“Keeping The City"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.Once,in August,head on your chest,I heard wingsbattering up the place,something inside trying to fly outand I was silentand attentive,the watchman.I was your small public,your small audiencebut it was you that was clapping,it was you untying the snarls and knots,the webs, all bloody and gluey;you with your twelve tongues and twelve wingsbeating, wresting, beating, beatingyour way out of childhood,that airless net that fastened you down.Since then I was more silentthough you had gone miles away,tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.I was therebut could do nothingbut guard the citylest it break.I was silent.I had a strange idea I could overhearbut that your voice, tongue, wingbelonged solely to you.The Lord was silent too.I did not know if he could keep you whole,where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,could do nothing. Not a single thing.The wings of the watchman,if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soulas he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,burst from the spidery-mother-web,burst from Woman herselfwhere too many had laid out lightsthat stuck to you and left a burnthat smarted into your middle age.The cityof my choicethat I guardlike a butterfly, useless, uselessin her yellow costume, swirlingswirling around the gates.The city shifts, falls, rebuilds,and I can do nothing.A watchmanshould be on the alert,but never cocksure.And The Lord -who knows what he keepeth?”