Lead me not into temptation:
I can find the way myself.

And did you get what
      you wanted out of life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
      beloved on the earth.

Exultation is the going
Of an island soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep eternity.

Except for the point, the still point
there would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.

So long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Gather out of star-dust
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
      Not For Sale

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, No, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

That pretty little beast, a poem,
     has a mind of its own.
Sometimes I want it to crave apples
     but it wants red meat.
Sometimes I want to walk peacefully 
      on the shore
and it wants to take off all its clothes
      and dive in.

Sometimes I want to use small words
      and make them important
and it starts shouting the dictionary,
      the opportunities.

Sometimes I want to sum up and give thanks,
      putting things in order
and it starts dancing around the room
      on its four furry legs, laughing
      and calling me outrageous.

But sometimes, when I’m thinking about you,
      and no doubt smiling,
it sits down quietly, one paw under its chin,
      and just listens.

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of 
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of the dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
      To be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the 
      mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
       in allegiance with gravity
          while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
      never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
       scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
      who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
       “ Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
     and bow their heads.

May I never not be frisky,
May I never not be risqué.

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,
and give them to the ocean,

leap in the froth of the waves,
still loving movement,

still ready, beyond all else,
to dance for the world.

We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a 
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.

“As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant. Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground. This
is our unalterable task, and we do it
joyfully.”

And they went on. “Listen,
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope and loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness.”

Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
Oh what is that beautiful thing
That just happened?

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a 

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches 
all day.  You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
      That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes 
       you move.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
        and frightened.

Don’t open the door to the study 
        and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss
       the ground.

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.

Sometimes you look at an empty valley
       like this
and suddenly the air is filled with snow.
That is the way the world happened—
there was nothing and then…..

But maybe sometime you will look out and even
the mountains are gone, the world becoming nothing
again. What can a person do to help
bring back the world?

We have to watch it and then look at each other.
Together we hold it close and carefully
save it, like a bubble that can disappear 
if we don’t watch out.

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe
on the world. Hold out your hands to it.
When mornings and evenings roll along,
watch how they open and close, how they
invite you to the long party your life is.