When a man says he hears angels singing, he hears angels singing. - Mary Oliver

What countries, what visitations, what pomp would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents

The salamanders,
like tiny birds, locked into formation,
fly down into the endless mysteries

of the transforming water,
and how could anyone believe
that anything in this world
is only what it appears to be — that anything is ever final — that anything, in spite of its absence,
ever dies
a perfect death?

(from the poem 'What Is It?')