A premise: within every human being there is the vatic voice. Vates was the Greek word for the inspired bard, speaking the words of a god. To most people, this voice speaks only in a dream, and only in unremembered dream.
I hoped to discover by means of an extended research project just how close the similarities might be, and where the differences lay. Such an endeavor could bring us nearer to an answer to the question, “What makes man human?”
The word you hear in this land
is bless—short and sharp
and significant, a sword blade
reflecting the sun.
After twenty years of postponing her love life and toiling as a professor of immunology at Cal Tech, Moonie finally has a breakthrough. She has been studying the humoral and cellular system of an earthworm named Carlos for fifteen years.
The day has come when my mother
no longer knows me.
It comes on a day of dying
paperwhites, crumpled
like words torn from a typewriter.