I think of myself as writing for one person, that one perfect reader who understands and loves.

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.

There is no word for time. Today we will not think to number another summer or watch its white bird into the ground.

I would like to think that no one would die anymore if we all believed in daisies but the worms know better, don't they? They slide into the ear of a corpse and listen to his great sigh.

Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.

I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people.

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.

think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well: larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!