You don’t want to be victimized by your lesser talents.
Wildness is not just the “preservation of the world,” it is the world.
Zen aims at freedom but its practice is disciplined.
All those years and their moments – Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, Poems tried out on friends, Will be one more archive, One more shaky text.
Streams and mountains never stay the same.
Today we are aware as never before of the plurality of human life-styles and possibilities, while at the same time being tied, like in an old silent movie, to a runaway locomotive rushing headlong toward a very singular catastrophe.
Place and the scale of space must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities.
All that we did was human, stupid, easily forgiven, Not quite right.
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.