Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.

Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

Teaching and writing are separate, but serve/feed one another in so many ways. Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out - helping OTHERS move inward - it is an honor to be with others in the spirit of writing and encouragement.

Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words and not one of them can save me.

Sometimes there’s no one to listen to what you really might like to say at a certain moment. The paper always listens.

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

Being alive is a common road. It's what we notice makes us different.