How peculiar it feelsto speak abouthealth care in Americataking care of people’shealthwhile our governmentbombsthe limbsoff childrenin faraway lands.And starves and imprisonsnot a few of themat home. How oddthat it seemsnot obviously knownthat true health caremust mean, at minimum,deliberate non-harmingof anyone?

If I could bethe mother of WindI would blow all fearaway from you. If I could bethe mother of WaterI would wash out the paththat frightens you. If I were the motherof TreesI would plantmy tallest childrenaround your feetthat you mightclimbbeyond all danger.But alas,I am onlya mother of humanswhose magic powershave vanishedsince we allowour littlest onesto face injusticesuffering & the unholiestof terrorsalone.

[C]hildren know good when they see it.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything.

human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well; if we are brought up around animals as children we take this for granted. By the time we are adults we no longer remember.

We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. If they do, it is our duty as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children. If necessary, bone by bone.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.