It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over.

Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.

I saw that worrying had come to nothing and gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

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.

Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.

I took one look and fell, hook and tumble.

I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.