Remember Joy Harjo  Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother's, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, [...]

Hope is the thing with feathers (254) Emily Dickinson  Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

On Children Kahlil Gibran  And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.      And he said:      Your children are not your children.      They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.      They come through you but not from you,      And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.      You may give them your love but not your thoughts,      For they have their own thoughts.      You may house their bodies but not their souls,      For their souls dwell in the house [...]

The Fish Elizabeth Bishop  I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. He didn't fight. He hadn't fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three rags of green weed [...]