#this tenderness

Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.

-- Dogfish

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

-- Wild Geese (not to get on my poem agenda; i know wild geese is popular but if you somehow haven’t read wild geese, please go read wild geese. it’s the poem that made me love poems)

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

-- When Death Comes

I love this world, even in its hard places. A bird too must love this world, even in its hard places. So, even if the effort may come to nothing, you have to do something.

-- For Example

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

-- Starlings in Winter

Did I actually reach out my arms toward it, toward paradise falling, like the fading of the dearest, wildest hope — the dark heart of the story that is all the reason for its telling?

-- The Chance To Love Everything

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

-- Don’t Hesitate 

How do I love you? Oh, this way and that way. Oh, happily. Perhaps I may elaborate by

demonstration? Like this, and like this and

   no more words now