Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.
Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.
I'm not very good at praying, but what I experience when I'm writing a poem is close to prayer.