Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. -Blackberry picking

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.

I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing.

Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.

Once I was on the job, once I had got started, I felt safe enough, but the anticipation made me tense.