Bill Moyers' last show a sort of farewell and his last guest, Barry Lopez had a few things to say aout keeping heads above sinking and for a reminder about finding a reverence for life that gets us beyond shadow and darkness and a sense of the futility of all this attempt at bettering a world that seems to have a recurring capacity for disintegration. When we started our webzine, Bush's Iraq War was the instigator; none of us saw that war as anything but an unnecessary disaster. Now we have the country divided over immigration, health care, financial reform, who's in, who's out. The stage continues to be complex and full of human error. It's as if we have been handed this unbelievably vast landscape of life and ideas on this small planet which is one of many spheres circling the sun. And we long for a wisdom and a poetics that keeps us aligned with possibilities, justice, and a sense that life is an unfathomable mystery worthy of our attention and love. The moon was full the other night as friends and I walked through old San Miguel, listening to music and watching the sky on a warm night. I felt a mild contentment, and a gratitude that I was here, with all the uncertainties and wonder condensing in a moment of skygazing. As Rilke said, there is something here that seems to require us and strangely concerns us. Even as forces inevitably arise that bring us down, there is a counter-current that returns us to celebrate, even revere our gift of living.

I had a dream last night of my old poetry friend Robert Creeley, whose widow Penelope recently wrote me. It's been five years since Bob died in Marfa, Texas where he was a visiting poet. In the dream, I see a house interior where Bob has set up his desk and writing materials--books and sheets of paper, and a whole rack of postcards from all over the world.  And my family is there, my dad Jack and Uncle Joe are sitting with me, and Bob enters a sort of bar and puts a digital camera down on the bar and it is charging its batteries. I want Bob to take pictures of us with him and record the moment. The camera is charging up for a moment that will create a souvenir of this occasion, a memory of this instant in time.

--Bill Pearlman

May Day, 2010