Margarita Engle

There is no place more lonelyThan a rich man's home.

The child tells me her grandmothershowed her how to cure sadness by sucking the juice of an orange, while standing on a beach.Toss the peels onto a wave.Watch the sadness float away.

Without even trying to be a teacher, Fredrika is teaching us,Showing us how to see things in new waysInstead of always thinkingThe same old thoughtsThat have been passed along by strangersDay after day, year after yearWithout any spirit of amazementOr wonder,

Night simply drapes itself over the dayAs if someone had lowered a curtain.The sky glitters and moves,Filled with shooting stars and fireflies.

Slavery all day,and then, suddenly, by nightfall- freedom!

I would have run awayInto the forestTo live in a nestMade of dreamsAnd green leaves

I don't understand the whole thrilling verse, but I love the way poetry turns ordinary words into winged things that rise up and soar!

If we knew how to find the lost, we would know how to rediscover the parts of our mindsleft behindin battle.

Marriage without love is just one more twisted form of slavery.

I can't understand why dark northern soldiers and light ones are seperated into different brigades. The dead are all buried together in hasty mass graves, bones touching.

Can it be true that freedom only exists when it is a treasure, shared by all?

Hatred must be a hard thing to learn.

Do I have to admit that I'm half Cuban and half American,or should I go even further, and explainthat Dad's parents were born in the Ukraine,part of Soviet Russia?Or am I just entirely American,all the fractions left behindby immigration from faraway nations?