How to Fly: In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons

by Barbara Kingsolver

Praise the careless syntax of a life where, through steady misuse, a noun grows feet: it turtles and outfoxes and one day, with no one watching, steps out as a brand-new verb.

it is half-past something I can’t stand one more minute of, and I wonder what we were thinking.

Last summer they lost her laugh,

Running is lost before walking, laughter before smiling, hope before fear.

Now we set our shoes to the pavement of living.

I cosset a hope that this weather might persist, bundling a household of family into one more day as mine before the world calls us out again.

Nature is nothing if not a congress of partial kindness.