But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.

I hope the poem, as it goes on, gets more complicated, a little more demanding, a little more ambiguous or speculative, so that we're drifting away from the casual beginning of the poem into something a little more serious.

I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

In the process of simplifying oneself, one often discovers the thing called voice.

I always think W.S. Merwin's poems will last of anyone writing today. If I had to bet on posterity I would bet Merwin. My poems could easily evaporate. So I don't know. If you find yourself as a writer thinking about posterity you should probably go out for a brisk walk or something.

But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest.

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.