--

The drop that left its homeland,

the sea, and then returned? 

It found an oyster waiting

and grew into a pearl. 

~Rumi

Beauty's Nest

It hurts

the heart to see

something so vast and deep

can also be made of dirt. 

And if it can be

of the earth, the body

ponders, might

such a landscape

exist also within me?

~Robin Coste Lewis

The Wilde Woman of Aiken

You

cannot

prevent me. 

~Robin Coste Lewis

On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari

Out of habit, the students pull out their American sympathy,

but then the driver says all the women sitting there

on the ground, dusty, with children in their laps, dangling

their ankles over the mountains, adorned--all--

wear enough gold, own enough 

buffalo to buy your whole house--cash. 

The night holds. Life is giving birth

in the middle of a warm dark road. 

~Robin Coste Lewis

Meditations

This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth. 

~Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

And the moral of it all? This. You embark; you make the voyage; you reach port: step ashore, then. 

~Marcus Aurelius

Women of Troy

Hecuba: Funerals are for the living, an empty show to impress their friends. 

~Euripides