“The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains them;so would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.”

“Days pass when I forget the mystery.Problems insoluble and problems offeringtheir own ignored solutionsjostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamberalong with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearingtheir colored clothes; caps and bells. And thenonce more the quiet mysteryis present to me, the throng's clamorrecedes: the mysterythat there is anything, anything at all,let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,rather than void: and that, 0 Lord,Creator, Hallowed one, You still,hour by hour sustain it.”

“I thought I was growing wings—it was a cocoon.I thought, now is the time to stepinto the fire—it was deep water.Eschatology is a word I learnedas a child: the study of Last Things;facing my mirror—no longer young,the news—always of death,the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoringand howling, howling....("Seeing For a Moment")”

“In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all.”

“I am, a shadowthat grows longer as the sunmoves, drawn outon a thread of wonder.If I bear burdensthey begin to be rememberedas gifts, goods, a basketof bread that hurtsmy shoulders but closes mein fragrance. I caneat as I go. ("Stepping Westward")”

“It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.”

“A voice from the dark called out,"The poets must give usimagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiarimagination of disaster. Peace, not onlythe absence of war." But peace, like a poem,is not there ahead of itself,can't be imagined before it is made,can't be known exceptin the words of its making,grammar of justice,syntax of mutual aid. A feeling towards it,dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we haveuntil we begin to utter its metaphors,learning them as we speak. A line of peace might appearif we restructured the sentence our lives are making,revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,questioned our needs, allowedlong pauses. . . . A cadence of peace might balance its weighton that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,an energy field more intense than war,might pulse then,stanza by stanza into the world,each act of livingone of its words, each worda vibration of light--facetsof the forming crystal.”