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.

Gestation requires protected space; ripening requires both permeability to the outer — and non-disturbance.

Poems . . . are perfume bottles momentarily unstopped - what they release is volatile and will vanish, and yet it can be released again.

It's one of the saving graces in a life, to be able to perceive one's own and others' absurdity, to notice our shared human frailties and be able, at least some of the time, to smile rather than grimace. Like most people, I must have started out with a comic worldview in my cupboard.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence.

I want to preserve a certain unknowing about my own poems - perhaps because unknowing is in itself a useful poetic thirst. To move the perimeter of saying outside my own boundaries is one reason I write.