Linda Breitag, 2004.

Written during a hard winter when friends and the larger mystery helped get me through. As Vietnamese poet-monk Thich Nhat Hanh put it: “You cultivate the flower in yourself so that I will be beautiful / I transform the garbage in myself so that you will not have to suffer.” The first verse is a humble homage to the Navajo Beauty Way. “People” means “all my relatives,” including strangers and tadpoles.