There are many poems that live in the territory I seem to drift to when I want to say something, a place made up of everything I see and hear and absorb for later. Lucky All Their Lives has most of the elements I’m talking about: It begins with the question, “What would you like?” I like to be asked that myself, so I ask it, as your host, sincerely. I try to offer a place—a beach, a geologic feature for interest, even a temperate day. The old people looking for agates could be you and me in a few years, now even. As you see, we are holding hands, which feels nice. We hear the calming sounds of the world at its business, and see, for free, that original painting that happens every evening at our edge of the world. Those campfires are comforting; they speak to something ancient in us, a glad feeling. And then the past becomes part of Now, all of our history included. We see ourselves from beyond, as if looking through a big clean window. I could be that man writing in his notebook, though I’ve been taught not to wear my hat indoors. You are the waitress who would like to let her hair down. Are we still holding hands? You get the picture. Let’s walk back home, wherever that is. I’m sure we’ll find something to do.

Quinton Duval