When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.

When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.

Each year the big garden grew smaller and Jane - who grew flowers by choice, not corn or stringbeans - worked at the vegetables more than I did. Each winter I dreamed crops, dreamed marvels of canning . . . and each summer I largely failed. Shamefaced, I planted no garden at all.

I don't know where a poem comes from until after I've lived with it a long time. I've a notion that a poem comes from absolutely everything that every happened to you.

I see no reason to spend your life writing poems unless your goal is to write great poems.

To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.

Today when I begin writing I’m aware: something that I don’t understand drives this engine.