I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.

Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.

Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.

When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body as a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. [from the poem "When Death Comes"]

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.