And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.

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.

On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

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

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.