John Zheng
Itta Bena, Mississippi, USA

Leadership Retreat

The speaker uses an empty paper plate to illustrate how one can create something out of nothing. On it, he writes some abstract nouns, such as engagement, responsibility, honesty, self-sacrifice. But no matter how emphatic his talk sounds, I wish he could juxtapose something concrete onto the plate.

December sky
a vast expanse
of leaden gray . . .
not even the voices
of crows