They spotlight those who walk like a dream, with no one waiting in the shadows to palm them back to living. - Lorna Dee Cervantes

I have learned the serenity
of a mockingbird, the justice
of a crow, blue jay's strength;
I've dipped their feathers in blood
to seal the pact—my path.

Things come to me, they speak to me. Stanley Kunitz has had an enormous impact on my life. He once said that poetry is only half language, the other half is a quality of perception, a function of the imagination, a particular form of paying attention. For me, it's a stilling of the self, waiting for this language to speak to me before I utter it.

I am not driven, so much, by intentions, as I am stunned into being by intent.