To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.

Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.

Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future.

Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief turning downward through it s black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink, the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.

Poetry for me has been a long pilgrimage, a journey and a growing relationship with the unknown.

You'll always love the person, if you're sensible. But you get a lot of people, especially in divorces and separations, doing a lot of damage to themselves, because they can't figure out that they actually still love this person, but not in their original way.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. Pay attention to everything in the world as if it's alive. Realize everything has its own discrete existence outside your story. By doing this, you open to gifts and lessons that the world has to give you.