I travel as much as I do. It isn't the life I expected. I don't know what dust of pollen will come back with me from these travels.But I must trust that I will not treat frivolously the glimpses I've been given into other places and others' lives.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

I will never become a horse trainer, a biologist, a person competent with a hammer. My loves were my loves.

A tree lives on its roots. If you change the root, you change the tree. Culture lives in human beings. If you change the human heart the culture will follow.

How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.