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From two literary women…each named Zora. The first is Zora Neale Hurston, the  American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Hurston’s four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I discovered her writings when I was in graduate school, all those many years ago. When times are challenging, I remember her words…”I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and sword in my hands.” What a wonderful expression of the highs and lows of living!

The second Zora, who carried the name Zora Emeline Henry, is a recent “find.” Her story is very different - descended from the patriot, Patrick Henry, Zora raised her six children virtually alone most of her life.  In her heart, she was a poet, and she has left a legacy of wonderful words.

She was an American pioneer – surviving by her wits and the strength of her physical frame. Zora spent her youth in a log cabin, having traveled by covered wagon through Indian Territory from Missouri to Oklahoma  with the Sooners. Her memories were of gathering wild rose honey, of being sent to the bubbling spring to bring the home-made butter and milk box for her mother, of the log school house her father helped build, of her having too learn to sew, quilt, crochet, and cook when she really wanted to be out with her brother fishing, hunting, breaking horses, climbing fences, and wading streams.

“Aim high, my Daddy told me when I was very small, look up and tiptoe if you want to grow real tall, and when you want to travel if you wish to go real far, build a good strong wagon, and hitch it to a star.” Sound familiar? Don’t we tell ourselves this same message of hope and determination almost every day…perhaps less poetically? Here’s another wonderful poem. I hope it inspires you as much as it does me…

THE UNIVERSAL PLAN

I wonder where people are going so fast
and why they hurry so
Just why they don’t stop and rest a bit

And watch the passing show.

Pray tell me what they hope to find
When they get to the end of the trail,
A pot of gold or a friend that’s kind,
or a church yard for sale.

Some folks I have known could tell you a lot,
I know what some have found,
By rushing through life and missing the show
The arrived at a hole in the ground

I’m a bit of the Universal Plan
Of the Universal God
On this mundane sphere where the race is man,
Of good earth! And very good sod!

So if dust I am like dust I go,
As dust I can do no sin,
I plant, I water, my seed shall grow
When my dust is ‘gone with the wind’.