“Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.”

“The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to c”

“It is, of course, we who house poems as much as their words, and we ourselves must be the locus of poetry's depth of newness. Still, the permeability seems to travel both ways: a changed self will find new meanings in a good poem, but a good poem also changes the shape of the self.”

“Perimeter is not meaning, but it changes meaning,/as wit increases distance, and compassion erodes it.”

“Standing DeerAs the house of a personin age sometimes grows clutteredwith what istoo loved or too heavy to part with,the heart may grow cluttered.And still the house will be emptied,and still the heart.As the thoughts of a personin age sometimes grow sparer,like the great cleanness come into a room, the soul may grow sparer;one sparrow song carves it completely.And still the room is full,and still the heart.Empty and filled,like the curling half-light of morning,in which everything is still possible and so why not.Filled and empty,like the curling half-light of evening,in which everything now is finished and so why not.Beloved, what can be, what was,will be taken from us.I have disappointed.I am sorry. I knew no better.A root seeks water.Tenderness only breaks open the earth.This morning, out the window,the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.”

“Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.”

“Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.”

“In a room with many windowssome thoughts slide past uncatchable, ghostly.”

“Hope is the hardest love we carry.”

“The heart's actionsare neither the sentence nor its reprieve. Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite. One bird singing back to another because it can't not.”

“as some strings, untouched,sound when no one is speaking.So it was when love slipped inside us.”