When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jay's call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart.

...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom.

Tranquillity hides in small spaces, and when found needs to be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again.

Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries that enchant us, love is my favorite

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world. ... they bring the world into focus, they corral ideas, they hone thoughts, they paint watercolors of perception.