Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

It's always a thrilling risk to say exactly what you mean, to express exactly what you see.

Time, we like to say, cures all. But maybe the old saying doesn’t mean time heals. Time cures a secret in its brine, keeping it and finally, paradoxically, destroying it. Nothing is left in that salt solution but the pain or rage, the biting shame that lodged it there. Even they are diluted or denied.

poetry is the sung voice of accurate perception.

The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

A careful first draft is a failed first draft

People come and go in life, but they never leave your dreams. Once they're in your subconscious, they are immortal.