In a recent, rather wonderful interview, I was asked about “The Krakow Nude,” a poem in My Heresies . . . a poem about the portrait that used to hang in my DC apartment. Although the “nude” isn’t one I’d share online, the first image from the Krakow photo series is less provocative. It is, for better or worse, a moment in time that shaped other moments in time. But I loved those photos and they partake of an “almost” that animates our political, social, and cultural discourses about what it means to be, and to be free. To quote Joe Henry’s portrait of Richard Pryor in an entirely different context, almost like I was free…

Lights shine above me, they're like your eyes above the street
Lights shine below me, they're like stars beneath my feet
I stood on your shoulders
And I walked on my hands
You watched me while I tried to fall
You can't bear to watch me land

— Joe Henry, “Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation”

I’ll see some of you in New York on Friday, which means the world to me, as I stand in a place I’ve always dreamed of entering— and read poems about the ones I cannot see.