“The Cloudy VasePast time, I threw the flowers out,washed out the cloudy vase.How easily the old clearnessleapt, like a practiced tiger, back inside it.”

“The nourishment of Cezanne's awkward apples is in the tenderness and alertness they awaken inside us.”

“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.”

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

“I thought I would love you forever—and, a little, I may,in the way I still move toward a crate, knees bent,or reach for a man: as one might stretchfor the three or four fruit that lie in the sun at the topof the tree; too ripe for any moment but this,they open their skin at first touch, yielding sweetness,sweetness and heat, and in me, each time since,the answering yes.”

“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.”

“One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.”