If you were to leave your body with this breath, you’d float across the lake like dandelion seeds on the wind; the cool denseness of the surface buoying you, the deep gravity of the water anchoring you.

If you were to leave your body with this breath, the stars would twinkle just as if you hadn’t, but the moon, the moon would heave earth and ocean just to draw you heavenward.

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From the center of our solar system
The sun casts light out to every corner of the universe.

We celebrate the light,
  and remark on its changes
In our calendars and almanacs
  as eclipses, equinoxes, and solstices
In our paintings and literature
  as epiphanies. 

To the sun credit is commonly given
for all life on earth,

_______________________________________________             ...

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Side of the box says "Pack like the Pros!"
At 12:12am on the last day in the house where you raised your children,
So tired you fell asleep twice on the kitchen floor,
Between the beans and the box of sugar cones already covered in powdery mildew;
You won't find out until you unpack it 3 months from now.

Pack like the prose,
Dense as the molasses tastes like corn syrup
Slick upstep salesm...

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Building a civilization
is a lot like baking a loaf of bread:
All you need are the right ingredients,
a little know-how,
and an oven.

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Would you choose a long life
  of perennial good health
  and perpetual leisure,
Or one breathtakingly short,
  punctuated by grief,
  but drawn in the lines
   and brushstrokes
  of an artist?

The choice was made already,
  long before you had a chance
  to contemplate the possibilities.

So surrender nothing,
  not even a moment
  of what can be forgiven.

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If you are first to rise in the morning,

  move lightly as you go, 

Children upstairs are still sleeping,

  folded in soft blankets, soft breathing.

Step, more softly than their dreaming.

Step, more softly than their dreaming.

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You’d never imagine the strength
  An eleven year old boy can muster,
Dragging his sister through the smoke.

Nine years old next Tuesday.

She takes a long, slow drag from the pipe,
  Cupping it in her mouth, blowing out smooth,
Then passes it to me.

Tiny red ember, delicate crown of ash.

You can’t stop to think when you reach the stairs,
  Even though you feel her head hitting
Ea...

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Where my strangeness
  meets your strangeness, 
a home exists. 

Without walls, absent judgement, 
  there is room only for expression, 
the peeling paint
  of self-discovery.

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I woke this morning
 before dawn
In the deep
 quiet of the night.

A gentle breeze was telling me
 "Go back to sleep"

But I was restless.

I rose thirsty, thinking of water
 but found myself walking
Past the kitchen,
 to the back hall.

I put on my sandals and left.

Walking east, I marveled
 at the brightness of the Morning Star
"Phosphorus" you had called it once;
 it seemed...

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In third grade we were just amorphous blobs,
  by fifth grade, we'd been sorted.
Princes, princesses, also-rans,
  and of course, the unrewarded.

I was the budding knight,
  and you the fragile flower.
Funny how I didn't notice then
  the missing petals in the dower.

It came as a suprise to me,
  that the sorting never stops
You'll think you've won
  the fight is done
And then the ...

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Lift the bucket of your own sorrow,
  and pour it out.
Carry the weight of your own grief,
  so you can be the one to release it.

What you have struggled against,
  you may yet conquer,
What you have proxied,
  you might never wash your hands of.

To proxy an act of violence
  is to be bound to it forever.
To delegate an accolade
  is to anul it.
To speak of a truly good thing
  is...

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Do not mind this mad-ness in me.

It is mindless,
  so give no thought to it.
It is angry,
  so give it no admittance to your heart.

Running without stopping,
you would soon drop from exhaustion.

Run then,
  but further.
Go ahead,
  but faster.

In my hands a loadstone, a dilemma.

Hold fast,
or join you.

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Every moment on Earth,
the sun is somewhere rising.

Wherever you are here, the sun will rise and pass over you, whether you acknowledge it or not.

Rise and pass over,
rise and pass over.

Ice knows it by the melting. Hidden pockets of  quartz-in-rock know it by the warming. I know it by the forgiveness I feel watching sunlight dance across the water.

Every moment on Earth,
the sun is...

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