To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it fallsDown over...

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.

The JourneyOne day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around youkept shoutingtheir bad advice –though the whole housebegan to trembleand you felt the old tugat your ankles.”Mend my life!”each voice...

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

All night my heart makes its wayhowever it can over the rough groundof uncertainties, but only until nightmeets and then is overwhelmed bymorning, the light deepening, thewind easing and just waiting, as Itoo wait (and...

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing – soften their roughest edges – to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

I know many lives worth living.

And now you’ll be telling storiesof my coming backand they won’t be false, and they won’t be truebut they’ll be real

Look, hasn’t my body already felt like the body of a flower?

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song...

And then I feel the sun itselfas it blazes over the hills,like a million flowers on fire –clearly I’m not needed,yet I feel myself turninginto something of inexplicable value.-from The Buddha’s Last Instruction

DAISIESIt is possible, I suppose that sometimewe will learn everythingthere is to learn: what the world is, for example,and what it means. I think this as I am crossingfrom one field to another, in summer,...

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

There are things you can’t reach. ButYou can reach out to them, and all day long.The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.I...

Why should I have been surprised?Hunters walk the forestwithout a sound.The hunter, strapped to his rifle,the fox on his feet of silk,the serpent on his empire of muscles—all move in a stillness,hungry, careful, intent.Just as...

The Old Poets Of ChinaWherever I am, the world comes after me.It offers me its busyness. It does not believethat I do not want it. Now I understandwhy the old poets of China went so...

…because my life without you would bea place of parched and broken trees…

Do you think the wren ever dreams of a better house?

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.

I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there’s a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that’sforgetting what...

Listen, whatever you see and love—that’s where you are.

As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.

The resurrection of the morning.The mystery of the night.The hummingbird’s wings.The excitement of thunder.The rainbow in the waterfall.Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

Come with me into the woods where spring isadvancing, as it does, no matter what,not being singular or particular, but oneof the forever gifts, and certainly visible.

Look, the treesare turningtheir own bodiesinto pillarsof light,are giving off the richfragrance of cinnamonand fulfillment,the long tapersof cattailsare bursting and floating away overthe blue shouldersof the ponds,and every pond,no matter what itsname is, isnameless now.Every...

No Matter WhatNo matter what the world claims, its wisdom always growing, so it’s said, some things don’t alter with time: the first kiss is a good example, and the flighty sweetness of rhyme. No...

MYSTERIES, YES Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we...

Last nightthe rainspoke to meslowly, saying, what joyto come fallingout of the brisk cloud, to be happy againin a new wayon the earth! That’s what it saidas it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanishedlike a...

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving

There’s Oliver, still standing around in the weeds. There she is, still scribbling in her notebook.” But, at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel. Restless. I read about ideas. Yet I...

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.

The Poet With His Face In His HandsYou want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need anymore of that sound.So if you’re going to do it and...

…eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in…And someone’s face, whom you love, will be as a starBoth intimate and ultimate, And you will be heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the...

Love, love, love, says Percy.And hurry as fast as you canalong the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.Then, go to sleep.Give up your body heat, your beating heart.Then, trust.

Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and...

It’s not the weight you carrybut how you carry it -books, bricks, grief -it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance it, carry itwhen you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing.Have you...

The man who has many answersis often foundin the theaters of informationwhere he offers, graciously,his deep findings.While the man who has only questions,to comfort himself, makes music.

Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen...

In your handsThe dog, the donkey, surely they knowThey are alive.Who would argue otherwise?But now, after years of consideration,I am getting beyond that.What about the sunflowers? What aboutThe tulips, and the pines?Listen, all you have...

EVERY DOG’S STORYI have a bed, my very own.It’s just my size.And sometimes I like to sleep alonewith dreams inside my eyes.But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepyand I wake and am afraid,...

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home...

LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT(PERCY THREE)He puts his cheek against mineand makes small, expressive sounds.And when I’m awake, or awake enoughhe turns upside down, his four pawsin the airand his eyes dark and fervent.Tell...

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they’re...

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing,and put your lips to the world.And live your life.