Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

People ought to like poetry the way a child likes snow & they would if poets wrote it.

Like the Sweetness of Gardenias Mother, you died 15 years ago. pain, a rapier, cut until, finally, there was just peace like the sweetness of gardenias in the crystal vase on your yellow kitchen table. so fragrant. your voice lingers in my ear reminding, scolding, guiding a pleasant mantra of tenderness, magic words that move my palms, your palms. together we are molding, helping, creating. in the mirror I see your eyes, your beautiful brown circles looking back, so radiant. "don't forget me," you whispered the day you died. I won't.

I am one of you and being one of you is being and knowing what I am and know. Yet I am the necessary Angel of earth, since, in my sight, you see the earth again.

God is gracious to some very peculiar people.

Life is an affair of people not of places. But for me, life is an affair of places and that is the trouble.

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.