Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat.

What we see as risk and foolhardiness on the outside, can seem more like constant cohesive drive on the inside that holds to priorities that cannot be discerned by others, because they reside in far too private a chamber of personal experience to be shared easily. To dare everything is not necessarily trouble, but often the opposite. To have faith in a foundation you have discovered in life and which, though it is difficult to describe even to yourself, you refuse to relinquish.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love.

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.

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.

It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.

There is a lovely root to the word humiliation - from the latin word humus, meaning soil or ground. When we are humiliated, we are in effect returning to the ground of our being.