Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not otherwise established. - Mary Oliver

I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old — or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

in this world I am as rich
as I need to be.