For my sister Peggy,
part of the sky of China,
and for my son Patterson,
for every child left behind.

Primer

This kid got so dirty
Playing in the ashes.

When they called him home,
When they yelled his name over the ashes,

It was a lump of ashes
that answered.

Little lump of ashes, they said,
Here's another lump of ashes for dinner,

To make you sleepy,
And make you grow.

Charles Simic

            And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.

Mark Twain's character Satan, "The Mysterious Stranger"

           If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or Life in the Woods

           Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.  Matthew 18:3

           The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.  Numbers 14:18

           Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.  Luke 17:21

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