This is, I think, what holiness is: the natural world, where every moment is full of the passion to keep moving. Inside every mind there’s a hermit… - Mary Oliver

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

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. Yes indeed.

Dogfish

I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country; I wanted
My life to close, and open
Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
Where it falls
Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
Whoever I was, I was

Alive
For a little while.

…mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
Or mean,
For a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
Swim through the fires to stay in
This world.