I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us... - 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.

determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.

Then I remember: death comes before the rolling away of the stone.