it is forbidden to love where we are not loved

I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

It might be a bad thing, not to know what's going on in the world. I can't say I really approve of it.

Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.

Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.

When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.