Practice good personal hygiene. Wash your hands before you eat. Be aware of good clean water and food sources.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

I write abundantly. And then my next step is to struggle to reduce the ornament, to reduce the abundance-to prune the book, in other words, the way one prunes a tree-so it can grow. This is my idea of a book.

Most of the pollution in the water already is dead animal and plant matter and building debris, ... good stagnant nursery for mosquitoes.

In a pine tree,/ A few yards from my window sill,/ A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and/ down./ On a branch./ I laugh, as I see him abandon himself/ To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do/ That the branch will not break.

Look: I am nothing. I do not even have ashes to rub into my eyes.

I close my eyes, and think of water.