And how should a beautiful, ignorant stream of water know it heads for an early release — out across the desert, running toward the Gulf, below sea level, to murmur its lullaby, and see the Imperial Valley rise out of burning sand with cotton blossoms, wheat, watermelons, roses, how should it know?

We live in the time of the colossal upright oblong.

Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.

Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.