Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Keeping kids safe is sometimes a delusion. The world is a perilous place. Sometimes the kitchen is a perilous place.

That is supposed to be the rallying cry of women in the age of AIDS: no condom, no sex. But the dirty little secret is that the rallying cry is a whisper.... The great unspoken on the heterosexual AIDS front has been how behavior is still determined by the old psychosexual minuet of the sexes, the lack of responsibility in young men and of assertiveness in young women.

There is little premium in poetry in a world that thinks of Pound and Whitman as a weight and a sampler, not an Ezra, a Walt, a thing of beauty, a joy forever.

Frankly, I'm mainly telling the story to myself. Thinking about audience is too daunting, and worst case, invites you to homogenize, to soften the hard edges of things.

If there is anyone who's living the work of the New Testament, it's the nuns of the Catholic church and not the Catholic hierarchy.

Acts of bravery don't always take place on battlefields. They can take place in your heart, when you have the courage to honor your character, your intellect, your inclinations, and yes, your soul by listening to its clean, clear voice of direction instead of following the muddied messages of a timid world.