For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.

But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

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

Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.