I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.