“maybe deathisn't darkness, after all,but so much lightwrapping itself around us--”

“Crossing the Swamp"Here is the endlesswet thickcosmos, the centerof everything—the nuggetof dense sap, branchingvines, the dark burredfaintly belchingbogs. Hereis swamp, hereis struggle,closure—pathless, seamless,peerless mud. My bonesknock together at the palejoints, tryingfor foothold, fingerhold,mindhold oversuch slick crossings, deephipholes, hummocksthat sink silentlyinto the black, slackearthsoup. I feelnot wet so much aspainted and glitteredwith the fat grassymires, the richand succulent marrowsof earth—a poordry stick givenone more chance by the whimsof swamp water—a boughthat still, after all these years,could take root,sprout, branch out, bud—make of its life a breathingpalace of leaves.”

“But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last.”

“Can You Imagine?For example, what the trees donot only in lightening stormsor the watery dark of a summer's nightor under the white nets of winterbut now, and now, and now - wheneverwe're not looking. Surely you can't imaginethey don't dance, from the root up, wishingto travel a little, not cramped so much as wantinga better view, or more sun, or just as avidlymore shade - surely you can't imagine they juststand there loving everyminute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark ringsof the years slowly and without a soundthickening, and nothing different unless the wind,and then only in its own mood, comesto visit, surely you can't imaginepatience, and happiness, like that.”

“Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face.Hello, you who made the morningand spread it over the fieldsand into the faces of the tulipsand the nodding morning glories,and into the windows of, even, themiserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was,dear star, that just happensto be where you are in the universeto keep us from ever-darkness,to ease us with warm touching,to hold us in the great hands of light –good morning, good morning, good morning. Watch, now, how I start the dayin happiness, in kindness.”

“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.”

“I thought the earth remembered me,she took me back so tenderly,arranging her dark skirts, her pocketsfull of lichens and seeds.I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,nothing between me and the white fire of the starsbut my thoughts, and they floated light as mothsamong the branches of the perfect trees.All night I heard the small kingdomsbreathing around me, the insects,and the birds who do their work in the darkness.All night I rose and fell, as if in water,grappling with a luminous doom. By morningI had vanished at least a dozen timesinto something better.”