Mornings at Blackwater" For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen. So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.

Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?