Happy Passover! Happy Easter!

               Adrienne Rich's passing this week signals the fading of an era of lesbian brilliance and creativity, which she and Audre Lorde led.  I remembering carrying treasured copies of Diving into the Wreck, Twenty-one Love Poems, and The Dream of a Common Language in my back pack carefully wrapped in a scarf or in a bag so as not to crinkle the corners.  I read my favorites over and over, the magic aphrodisiac of her language rolling off my tongue:  "We are, I am, you are /by cowardice or courage /the one who find our way /back to this scene /carrying a knife, a camera /a book of myths / in which/ our names do not appear."  I won't quote the floating love poem here, but this third of the Twenty-One Love Poems brings tears to my eyes: 

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time 
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young. 
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty, 
my limbs streaming with a purer joy? . . . 
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever. 
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits. 
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, 
and somehow, each of us will help the other life, 
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.  

            This week Doris and I took a vacation away from Duke Medicine and drove two hours south to IKEA in Charlotte.  We reveled like runaways to be on the open road with the country side of blossoming trees whooshing past.