1. My first poet love, Dylan Thomas, features in today's New York Times in a beautiful article by Ondine Cohane. Like her, I discovered Thomas's poetry in high school. I listened to his voice recordings and read the poems over and over and over again the way some teens today obsess over a song or musical artist. In my junior year, I won the school's poetry contest (think oral interpretation) with "Fern Hill," and those beautiful lines still, all these years later, come quickly to my tongue and mind.
2. The hyacinths in Abbo's Alley unfold slowly from bud to olive-cream to blue-purple flower, and with them I celebrate the coming of that season that reminds me of the generous fecundity of the world in which I am but a small part. I lay on the "fields of praise" this morning, snapping again and again and again only for the joy of looking.
3. In my youth, racist terrorists tried to kill Congressman John Lewis, then a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist dedicated to winning civil rights for all those living in the country he calls "The Beloved Community." A hero. A true American hero. A fellow native Alabamian, a man with dignity and faith in our better selves and commitment to doing good, no matter the cost, and joy in living. He dances. He is happy, and he makes me happy.
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