Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay.

Poetry is an enumeration of birds, bees, babies, butterflies, bugs, bambinos, babayagas, and bipeds, beating their way up bewildering bastions.

The fog comes on little cat feet.

The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away.

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

I take you and pile high the memories. Death will break her claws on some I keep.

My first stringed instrument was a cigar box banjo where I cut and turned the pegs and strung the wires myself.