Clouds sink down the hills Coffee is hot again. The dog Turns and turns about, stops and sleeps.
I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.
Burning the small dead branches broke from beneath thick spreading whitebark pine. A hundred summers snowmelt rock and air hiss in a twisted bough.
O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!
True affluence is not needing anything.
After weeks of watching the roof leak I fixed it tonight by moving a single board.
What is any religion? A little ritual, a little superstition, and some magic. It’s not a strictly spiritual affair; it has psychological roles to fulfill. You might not want it to be a religion based on your own experience but that’s like wanting to clean up your dreams.
Thought is just an apprehension of touch.
A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.
I never find words right away. Poems for me always begin with images and rhythms, shapes, feelings, forms, dances in the back of my mind.
Read carefully, then don’t read; work hard, then forget about it; know your tradition, then liberate yourself from it; learn language, then free yourself from it. Finally, know at least one form of magic.
The other side of the “sacred” is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.
The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.
A great poet does not express his or her self; he expresses all of our selves.
You run into people who want to write poetry who don’t want to read anything in the tradition. That’s like wanting to be a builder but not finding out what different kinds of wood you use.
Poetry a riprap on the slick rock of metaphysics.
Knowing where and who are intimately linked.
Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place.
My Grandmother standing wordless fifteen minutes Between rows of loganberries, clippers poised in her hand.
Grandfather Space. The Mind is his Wife.