There are landscapes and species that are not going to be here a hundred years from now, fifty years from now. One gift we as writers give to the world is to bear witness to these landscapes and species as we have experienced them.

You see this incredible capacity for replication in nature, survival, development, all of these things that are around us all the time in nature that just happen. By comparison, human life is really, really complicated. We're gifted animals, but we are so complicated. Nothing is easy for us, except maybe eating too much.

I'm filled with despair. We live in a pathological culture filled with rage and bitterness and greed. The hate-mongering and racism is reaching a frightening pitch.

Life seems complicated to me; I feel confused a lot of the time by life. I feel confused about the fact that we can be so tender as creatures to one another, and so monstrous at the same time.

Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.

I'm always doing poems from a place of not-knowing, a place of ignorance in a way.

As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures.