"and people. People would turn green and grow
If there were water, plenty of rain.
We're not sure about this, as it has never happened.
But there is something, just under the skin here,

Something more than sweat. There is a green
Inside, waiting to change everything."

- from "The Rain that Falls here" by Alberto Rios

"I want to explain how, when the elephant falls, she falls
like a cropped elm. First the shudder, then the toppling
as the surge ripples through each nerve and vein, a
and she drops in silence and a fit of stream to lie there
prone, one eye opened that i wish I could close ."

- from "Electrocuting an Elephant" by Ciaran Berry

"What none knows is when, not if.
Now that your life nears its end
when you turn back what you see
is ruin. You think, It is a prison. No,
it is a vast resonating chamber in
which each thing you say or do is

new but the same. What none knows is
how to change. "

- from "If see no end in is" by Frank Bidart

"
Sitting in the lobby
The universe grows
We are dizzy as mercury
We are solitudes aided by awe "

- from "Phone Booth" by Brenda Hillman

I'm not sure there is any connection between the four excerpts, they just all struck and stuck to me as I read them. And I felt like my "journal" needed a change of scenery. All the poem come from this years edition of The Best American Poetry (2008) , which is one of the best so far, I have to say.