Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

On the beach, at dawn:Four small stones clearlyHugging each other.How many kinds of loveMight there be in the world,And how many formations might they makeAnd who am I everTo imagine I could knowSuch a marvelous...

This is what I have. The dull hangover of waiting, the blush of my heart on the damp grass,the flower-faced moon. A gull broods on the shore where a moment ago there were two. Softly...

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

Love SorrowLove sorrow. She is yours now, and you musttake care of what has beengiven. Brush her hair, help herinto her little coat, hold her hand,especially when crossing a street. For, think,what if you should...

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming...

It does no good to bark at the television,I said. I’ve tried it too. So he stopped.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

Of course! the path to heavendoesn’t lie down in flat miles.It’s in the imaginationwith which you perceive this world,and the gestureswith which you honor it.-from The Swan

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it...

Tom Dancer’s gift of a whitebark pine coneYou never knowWhat opportunityIs going to travel to you,Or through you.Once a friend gave meA small pine cone-One of a fewHe found in the scatOf a grizzlyIn Utah...

Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It’s early work, derivative work.

the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own

I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story...

Percy and BooksPercy does not like it when I read a book.He puts his face over the top of it, and moans.He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.The sun is up, he says, and the...

When it’s over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don’t want to wonderif I...

When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then.So I try not to miss anything.I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moonor the...

When Death ComesWhen death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like...

New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it...

“Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.When it’s over, I don’t want to wonderif I have made...

Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

I Go Down To The ShoreI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out,and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall—what should I do?...

West Wind #2You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen...

I would like people to remember of me, howinexhaustible was her mindfulness.

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?