You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotion. - Mary Oliver

But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple — or a green field — a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing — an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness — wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak — to be company.

Listen — are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.