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This Moment In Time In Brooklyn

A cabby picks me up at the cabstand at La Guardia Airport, but not before I’m handed a bright yellow brochure titled Taxi Information. In three languages, the brochure lists sample fares from the airport to the city’s five boroughs. There’s also space to record the driver’s medallion and license numbers if the cabby is rude or refuses to go to a particular neighborhood — the South Bronx, for example.

Oh

Selected Poems

Interlude

The Disappearing God

I don’t mistake self-punishment for devotion anymore. I am a born-again believer in lovingkindness. I don’t waste my time with a God who leaves me. My God lies down with me and tells me I am beauty and grace incarnate. My God celebrates me as gloriously as I celebrate Him. I worship a God who believes in me.

And There Was Light

I felt indescribable relief and a happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came as if a prayer had been answered. I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separate in my experience. I have had them or lost them together.

Sunbeams

Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.

William James

The Distance

As I listen, a finch flies by outside the window, its gold breast in shiny contrast to the black and white of its wings. My son rarely talks about that trip to Peru three years ago, during which he was shot and his friend Patchen was killed.