#10

We watched the towers collapse. We watched America choose war. The peace in our own hearts shattered.

How to pick up the pieces?

What to do with the pieces?

I was desperate to retrieve the poetry I had lost.

Standing on a rocky point in Maine, looking east toward the horizon at dusk, I faced the ocean. "Give me one wild word." It was all I asked of the sea.

The tide was out. The mudflats exposed. A gull picked up a large white clam, hovered high above the rocks, then dropped it. The clam broke open, and the gull swooped down to eat the fleshy animal inside.

"Give me one wild word to follow..."

-Terry Tempest Williams, Finding Beauty in a Broken World