Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Willa Cather takes us to the West


Last book we are reading
in my high school literature class.
Amazing digging into the ideas just
in the beginning of Manifest Destiny
and immigrants and caring for
widows and orphans.

"The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers...I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."
Willa Cather

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