I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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

You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.

from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which is the only way to love, isn't it? this isn't a playground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. therefore i have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods that hold you in the center of my world. and i say to my body: grow thinner still. and i say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. and i say to my heart: rave on.

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.