It's all so beautiful . . . the spring . . . and books and music and fires. . . . Why aren't they enough?

A short-lived fascination with another person may be exciting-I think we've all seen people aglow, in a state of being "in love with love"-but such an attraction is not sustainable over the long run. Paradoxically, human love is sanctified not in the height of attraction and enthusiasm, but in the everyday struggles of living with another person. It is not in romance but in routine that the possibilities for transformation are made manifest. And that requires commitment.

But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.

Changing husbands is only changing troubles.

Poets are immersed in process, and I mean process not as an amorphous blur but as a discipline. The hard work of writing has taught me that in matters of the heart, such as writing, or faith, there is no right or wrong way to do it, but only the way of your life. Just paying attention will teach you what bears fruit and what doesn't. But it will be necessary to revise--to doodle, scratch out, erase, even make a mess of things--in order to make it come out right.

We can't give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.