“But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest. ”

“It is time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a sea of unremarkable men and women, anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabetized things, a million forgotten hours.”

“High School is the place where poetry goes to die.”

“I think my work has to do with a sense that we are attempting, all the time, to create a logical, rational path through the day. To the left and right there are an amazing set of distractions that we usually can’t afford to follow. But the poet is willing to stop anywhere.”

“JapanToday I pass the time readinga favorite haiku,saying the few words over and over.It feels like eatingthe same small, perfect grapeagain and again.I walk through the house reciting itand leave its letters fallingthrough the air of every room.I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.I say it in front of a painting of the sea.I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.I listen to myself saying it,then I say it without listening,then I hear it without saying it.And when the dog looks up at me,I kneel down on the floorand whisper it into each of his long white ears.It’s the one about the one-tontemple bellwith the moth sleeping on its surface,and every time I say it, I feel the excruciatingpressure of the mothon the surface of the iron bell.When I say it at the window,the bell is the worldand I am the moth resting there.When I say it into the mirror,I am the heavy belland the moth is life with its papery wings.And later, when I say it to you in the dark,you are the bell,and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,and the moth has flownfrom its lineand moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.”

“But some nights, I must tell you,I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep.I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness.I sing a love song as well as I can,lost for a while in the home of the rain. ”

“It seems only yesterday that I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.”