Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Only God and I knew what I meant when I wrote it, now only God knows

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.