If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.

Trees for example, carry the memory of rainfal. In their rings we read ancient weather - storms, sunlight and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.

Any given moment - no matter how casual, how ordinary - is poised, full of gaping life.

Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.

I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.

The dead leave us starving with mouths full of love.” from “Memoriam

Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.