Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.

Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.