A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession.

There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—

The way things work / is that eventually / something catches.

We have to find a way to not refuse to see where we are, what we are doing, and yet we must still live. And making sure to live - to go through life not around it - was always hard. Making sure to be in the vale of soul - making - as John Keats put it. Now it's insanely hard.

A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession.

What poetry can, must, and will always do for us: it complicates us, it doesn’t ‘soothe.’

Water is a miracle - it takes so many forms - is the core of life - is holy. So it becomes important to pay utmost attention to the holiness which is this planet's life - blood, which we are destroying. I always look for it in a poem. I honor it. I pay it mind.