Love Lists

1.  Hearing my students laugh.  I love poems that challenge us to make the "story" fit.

2.  I love Nora telling me how to play:  "Step One:  Get out the Polly Pockets.  Step Two:  Put them in magic water.  Step Three:  Change their hair with a color that won't wash off.  Step Three, or Four:  Play with them.  Okay, now go."

3.  I love something forever all at once.

4.  That the answers to every question are written on our heart, waiting in our mouth to become the sound of one alive and speaking life even when it is to cry and to scream.

5.  I love Baptism.

6.  I love modal chord progressions under repeating banjo refrains.

7.  I love that I have been so sad and don't feel that sad now.  Interesting and glorious.  (The poem is just a moment passing through us.)

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9.  It is good to say what one loves because it leads toward the simple answer that lifts a heavy, complicated burden.