Women Authors From The United States

"These words are the weight cupped in our palms: the small broken note of freedom."

"Part of it hides behind the headlines where this shard of the story will never be told."

"She took her slice of life then gave without measuring or counting"

"what's left but shards of memory smoothed and hoarded, shrapnel griefs, a few regrets?"

"ground resilient beneath our feet, sky glimmering between branches of trees older than any of us."

"Who knew the past would follow us so far, years collapsing like an ancient accordion, scraps of memory tucked like torn photographs into the sockets of our eyes?"

"The distance between one breath and another is like the miles starlight travels to reach my dreams."

"so I hoard memories sort them for seeds to plant pray they root"

"Remember the splintered staccato of bullets against rock, the way dust rose in the stunned aftershock of silence?"

"Once she could have held anything steady and safe: a glass of tea, her brother's baby. Now her hands shake at the weight of a fork."

"hopes for peace: hand clasped in hand firmer than fist on a gun or club, hand raised in greeting stronger than hand raised for violence"

"Today his words surround me with the quiet intensity of growing things, roots planted a long time ago lacing the distances of my heart."

"Bless poetry books that cross oceans in battered envelopes, bearing small flames of words."

"See how we save even the broken bits of pottery, fitting fragments together along jagged lines to remember you"

"consider the infinite fragility of an infant's skull, how the bones lie soft and open only time knitting them shut"

"May we all fit together like this: trees, birds, sky, people, separate elements in a living portrait, outlines smoothed by the forgiving wash of lingering light. Whatever the skins we live in, the names we choose, the gods we claim or disavow, may we be like grains of sand on the beach at night: a hundred million separate particles creating a single expanse on which to lie back and study the stars. And may we remember the generosity of light: how it travels through unimaginable darkness, age after age, to light our small human night."

"Did my parents know that what they planted, roots against the drought, would survive?"

"We learned to let our faces hide our selves, to speak our story in a private tongue, the past a shadow in our bones."

"The whole Everglades were burning. What had been a river of grass and sweet water that had given meaning and life and uniqueness to this whole enormous geography through centuries in which man had no place here was made, in one chaotic gesture of greed and ignorance and folly, a river of fire."

"But the white man, in all his teeming variety, men of the farms and the Glades, men of the cities and of the sea, whose inertia and pigheadedness, greed and willfulness had caused all this, as if for the first time seeing what he had done, now, when it was almost too late, the white man was aroused. For the first time in South Florida since the earliest floods, there were mass meetings and protests, editorials, petitions, letters, and excited talk. Thousands, choking in acrid smoke, saw for the first time what the drainage of the Glades had brought to pass."

"The Indians, before anyone else, knew that the Everglades were being destroyed. During the war there was less and less rain, in one of those long, unpredictable, unpreventable dry spells, in which year after year the fresh water, like the soil, shrank away."

"The Everglades were one thing, one vast unified harmonious whole, in which the old subtle balance, which had been destroyed, must somehow be replaced, if the nature of this whole region and the life of the coastal cities were to be saved."

"There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass."

"till the moon rises, the night opens, and all the stars shine out."

"(The Indian Re-Organization Act) was like the small beginning of new hope, in the century-long history of man's destructiveness here, by which long ago the parakeets and the ivory-billed woodpecker had been exterminated, the egret and the white ibis only just saved by the Audubon Society that was still trying to protect the last of the roseate spoonbill, the Everglades kite and the almost vanished crocodile."

"The sun will rise again tomorrow, vigilant and weary as hope."

"consider a delicate porcelain bowl how it crushes under a single blow- in one moment whole years disappear"

"No matter how far you've come, remember: the starting line is always closer than you think."

"Though earth be but an outpost of delight, Heaven"s wild frontier by tragedy beset, Only a Shakespeare may her gifts requite. Only a happy Raphael pay his debt. Yet I, to whom, even as to these, are given Cascading foam, emblazoned butterflies, The moon"s pearl chariot through the massed clouds driven, And the divinity of loving eyes, Would make my peace now with mine hostess Earth, Give and take pardon for all brief annoy, And toss her, far beneath my lodging"s worth, Poor that I am, a coin of golden joy."

"I am thy strong consoler when the desolate human pain Darkens upon thee, the azure outblotted by rush of the rain. All thou dost cherish may perish; still shall thy quest remain."

"Call me thy foe in thy passion; claim me in peace for thy friend; Yet bethink thee by lowland and upland, wherever thou wiliest to wend, I am thine Angel of Judgment; mine eyes thou must meet in the end."

"I am the drawn sword barring the lanes thy mutinous feet Vainly covet for greenness. Loitering pace or fleet, Thine is the crag-path chosen. On the crest shall rest be sweet."

"Because the years are few, I must be glad; Because the silence is so near, I sing; "Twere ill to quit an inn where I have had Such bounteous fare nor pay my reckoning. I would not, from some gleaming parapet Of Sirius or Vega, bend my gaze On a remembered sparkle and regret That from it thanklessly I went my ways Up through the starry colonnades nor found Violets in any Paradise more blue Than those that blossomed on my own waste ground Nor vespers sweeter than the robins knew."

"Still thy mellow voice and clear Floats o'er land and listening deep, And we deem our fathers hear From their shadowy hill of sleep. Ring thy peals for centuries yet, Living voice of Paul Revere! Let the future not forget That the past accounted dear!"

"By the promise of noon"s blue splendor in the dawn"s first silvery gleam, By the song of the sea that compelleth the path of the rockcleaving stream, I summon thee, recreant dreamer, to rise and follow thy dream."

"In the inmost core of thy being I am a burning fire, From thine own altar-flame kindled in the hour when souls aspire, For know that men"s prayers shall be answered, and guard thy spirit"s desire."

"O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears. America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea."

"O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassion'd stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness. America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law."

"O beautiful for heroes prov'd In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life. America! America! May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness, And ev'ry gain divine."

"Never was there lovelier town Than our Falmouth by the sea. Tender curves of sky look down On her grace of knoll and lea."

"That which thou wouldst be thou must be, that which thou shalt be thou art; As the oak, astir in the acorn, the dull earth rendeth apart, Lo thou, the seed of thy longing, that breaketh and waketh the heart."

"I’m sure you’re familiar with the backfire effect. This is when someone says something that’s just dead wrong, and you very politely correct them and give them the facts, and they double down on their original claim. They’ll tell you you’re an arrogant scientist and that they know in their gut or their heart that it’s true. And that’s because it’s a core belief and it’s tied to identity. When you attack that core belief, you’re attacking them in their minds whether they know it or not, and it’s very difficult to overcome that."

"Here is princely interchange Of the gifts of shore and field, Starred with treasures rare and strange That the liberal sea-chests yield. Culture here burns breezy torch Where gray captains, bronzed of neck Tread their little length of porch With a memory of the deck. Ah, and here the tenderest hearts, Here where sorrows sorest wring And the widows shift their parts Comforted and comforting. Holy bell of Paul Revere Calling such to prayer and praise. While a hundred times the year Herds her flock of faithful days!"

"I am the cry of the night wind, startling thy traitorous sleep; Moaning I echo thy music, and e"en while thou boastest to reap Alien harvests, my anger resounds from the vehement deep."

"O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!"

"I am the solitude folding thy soul in a sudden embrace. Faint waxes the voice of thy fellow, wan the light on his face. Life is as cloud-drift about thee alone in shelterless space."

"Greetings to thee, ancient bell Of our Falmouth by the sea! Answered by the ocean swell, Ring thy centuried Jubilee! Like the white sails of the Sound, Hast thou seen the years drift by, From the dreamful, dim profound To a goal beyond the eye."

"My body has the capacity to sense immense pleasure, and as I get older I keep intentionally expanding my sensual awareness and decolonizing it so that I can sense more pleasure than capitalism believes in."

"True pleasure-joy, happiness and satisfaction-has been the force that helps us move beyond the constant struggle, that helps us live and generate futures beyond this dystopic present, futures worthy of our miraculous lives. Pleasure-embodied, connected pleasure-is one of the ways we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world."

"When I feel like a failure, I look at my plants, at how they wilt and seem to be dying, and then water and sun and my loving words bring them back to vibrancy. I let water move over me, sun change me, love reach me. I root down into the soil and back into my lineage, which reminds me that everything is temporary but nothing disappears, this is how life is. I reach forward and up, shaping a world that feels good for me, for all who look like me, for all who love like me, for all who have yet to realize that love is liberation. I let myself work through anger until all that is left is compassion. I cultivate justice within myself, rooted not in vengeance or righteousness but in love and interdependence. I work hard on answering my calling, listening to the bass notes of my life, following underground rivers to find more room for my whole self. I let my days be spent in love, connection, and creation."