Excerpt: Leaves of Grass

In folks nearest to you finding also the sweetest and strongest and lovingest,

Happiness not in another place, but this place . . not for another hour, but this hour

 

                                                    Walt Whitman 

Buried treasure

You bury your childhood here and there.
        It waits for you, all your life,
                to come back and dig it up.

                        Anthony Doerr, Memory Wall

Repeat

There are only two or three human stories,
    and they go on repeating themselves
        as fiercely as if they had never happened before;
            like the larks in this country,  
                that have been singing the same five notes
                    over for thousands of years.

                                    Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dry places

In the dry places, men begin to dream.

Where the rivers run sand,
    there is something in man that begins to flow.

West of the 98TH Meridian -
    where it sometimes rain and it sometimes doesn’t
        – towns, like weeds, spring up when it rains,
                dry up when it stops.

But in a dry climate, the husk of the plant remains.
The stranger might find, as if preserved in amber,
    something of the green life that was once lived there,
        and the ghosts of men who have gone on to a better place.

The withered towns are empty, but not uninhabited.
Faces sometimes peer out from the broken windows,
    or whisper from the sagging balconies, as if this place –
        now that is dead – had come to life.

As if empty it is forever occupied.

                            Wright Morris, The Works of Love                

 

 

 

 

 

Small towns

Small towns make up for their lack of people
        by having everyone be more interesting.

    Doris Haddock, Granny D: Walking Across America in My Ninetieth Year