I imagine those who load trucks with diamonds every day in South Africa get to a point where they look at a load of diamonds as no big deal. The essential pain and pleasure of life, the fulcrum of life, is change. When I wrote Black Mesa Poems, it was to explore the surroundings and empathize with what others feel in life. In my poetry, I have moved from my inner soul to the communal soul we all share on this planet. I also believe compassion should be shared by all daily, and I try to show this now in my writings.
Compassion is also a very necessary thing in literature.
American writers call it giving voice to the lines. Indigenous people in North America call compassion a way of seeing. In Latin America and Mexico, people see it as a way of connecting and blending into another life form, and my beliefs are most closely parallel with this view. In this sense, Black Mesa Poems was my attempt to become one of the watermarks on the canyon wall, to join into a community that was here long before I was and will be long after I am gone. I hope I have become a communal member rather than a single voice.