I was introduced to spirituality in a very strange way.Returning to Manhattan from Brooklyn on the F train I saw an obscene drawing scratched into the stainless steel above the seats. It was late at night, I was alone--I was coming from a friend's poetry reading.

The "etching" was titled "Yo Maria." Her tears were comically large. Her pubs scarred. Yo Maria, I thought , look what they have done to you. And I felt her pain, more than I ever felt for her son . The light was glaring, her steel real. I did not think of the suffering of my own mother, though I do now. Then I thought of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. I first read it as a child and thought it a wonderous sea story. Ishmael, not Ahab, was my hero. He too, felt pain.