This is what life does. It lets you walk up to the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman down beside you at the counter who says, Last night, the channel was full of [...]
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart. Without knowing it, from various ills— A bird and a tree say to him: Friend. Then he wants to use himself and things So [...]
It takes courage to see beauty in a world spread deep and silent with interminable whiteness; and to keep on being awed by such uncommon splendor while trying to suppress a fundamental fear of being buried by it. But know it as it is: Beauty is everlasting. And winter's burial is not. Underneath cold winter [...]
You carry All the ingredients To turn your life into a nightmare- Don’t mix them! You have all the genius To build a swing in your backyard For God. That sounds Like a hell of a lot more fun. Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints, Gathering our talented friends. I will help you With my divine [...]
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark, in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot, the one you beat to the punchline, [...]
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? [...]
You can't order a poem like you order a taco. Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two" and expect it to be handed back to you on a shiny plate. Still, I like your spirit. Anyone who says, "Here's my address, write me a poem," deserves something in reply. So I'll tell you [...]
I no longer believe in the idea of magic, Christs, the self, metal buddhas, bibles. A horse is only the space his horseness requires. If I pissed in the woods would a tree see my ear Fall off and would the ear return to the body On the morning of the third day? Do bo [...]
In Praise of My Sister My sister doesn’t write poems and it’s unlikely that she’ll suddenly start writing poems. She takes after her mother, who didn’t write poems, and also her father, who likewise didn’t write poems. I feel safe beneath my sister’s roof: my sister’s husband would rather die than write poems. And, even [...]
If only for once it were still. If the not quite right and the why is could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter, and the static my senses make— if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake— Then in one vast thousandfold thought I could think you up to where thinking ends. I [...]