June 19, 2009 – It was a country day. Drove to the Toyota dealership in Glens Falls, then to Saratoga, then back to Glens Falls to get my truck, then to Bennington, Vt. for dinner. Bearing down on the novel, looking for a title. Waiting to finish my first children’s books. 

_______

   “Halleluiah”

   “Everyone should be born into this world happy
             and loving everything.
   but in truth it rarely works that way.
   For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
   Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!
 
  And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
     Almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
     and how miraculously kind some people can be?
  And have you too decided that probably nothing important
     is ever easy?
  Not, say, for the first sixty years.

   Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,
   and some days I feel I have wings.”

   From “Evidence” a new book of poems by Mary Oliver.