This Is The First, Wildest, And Wisest

People Want Poetry. They Need Poetry. They Get It. They Don't Want Fancy Work.

... Let Us Risk The Wildest Places, Lest We Go Down In Comfort, And Despair.

Praying 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.

Poetry Is A River; Many Voices Travel In It; Poem After Poem Moves Along In The Exciting Crests And Falls Of The River Waves. None Is Timeless; Each Arrives In An Historical Context; Almost Everything, In The End, Passes. But The Desire To Make A Poem, And The World's Willingness To Receive It--indeed The World's Need Of It--these Never Pass.

Tom Dancer’s Gift Of A Whitebark Pine Cone You Never Know What Opportunity Is Going To Travel To You, Or Through You. Once A Friend Gave Me A Small Pine Cone- One Of A Few He Found In The Scat Of A Grizzly In Utah Maybe, Or Wyoming. I Took It Home And Did What I Supposed He Was Sure I Would Do- I Ate It, Thinking How It Had Traveled Through That Rough And Holy Body. It Was Crisp And Sweet. It Was Almost A Prayer Without Words. My Gratitude, Tom Dancer, For This Gift Of The World I Adore So Much And Want To Belong To. And Thank You Too, Great Bear