The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives

The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.

In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans.

Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far.

The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself.

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.