Hard Times Require Furious Dancing.

This is the title of Alice Walker's new book of poetry. In the preface, Walker writes

Once a person of periodic deep depressions, a sign of mental suffering in my family that affected each sibling differently, I have matured into someone I never dreamed I would become: an unbridled optimist who sees the glass as always full of something. It may be half full of water, precious in itself, but in the other half there's a rainbow that could exist only in the vacant space.

I have learned to dance.

And in case that image of the rainbow in the vacant space of the glass half full isn't enough, here is a short little bit of lovely from the book.

Sometimes
who knows how?
the body & the soul
come back
together
again
the hand
holding the pen
writes
not advertising
but
heart.