A studio, like a poem, is an intimacy and a freedom you can look out from, into each part of your life and a little beyond.

What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.

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

Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.

Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.