Today I want to share a poem, “I, Too,” by Langston Hughes. In this poem, Hughes expresses both the great shame of the inequities built into American life and the potential, beauty and need to change also built into American life. The poem responds to...
I’ve been lucky to spend the past ten days out of the city, spending less time on my computer. We’re renting a house on a lake in Maine and yesterday as I was swimming, a huge bird flew above me, circling and circling, flapping its enormous, graceful wings that seem...
In “this morning…” Lucille Clifton sees herself in the young girls she sees going to school. IN others, she sees herself, and she celebrates these young black women for their beauty and strength even despite a culture that often does not recognize or respect...
Rumi’s “The Breeze at Dawn” reminds us to step into the day, into wakefulness. Wherever we find ourselves, there are opportunities. This is a poem not only about morning, but about any transition, the transition from night to day, life to death. It...
“This Morning I Pray for My Enemies” is a beautiful poem to greet the morning, the morning of the wise heart, the heart that is able to see both injustice and love, that is able to feel both anger and blessing. It does not ask us necessarily to forgive,...
Rainer Maria Rilke’s “God’s True Cloak” denounces the ways in which images and forms of hierarchy separate us from direct connection to God, spirit, and the world around us. He addresses the mist directly and suggests that we project worldly images onto the natural...
