“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

Outside my window
sienna eyes of towhee
true gift of winter
No roomful of gifts—
many Christmases have passed
without my father
Ribbons of white glitter
against wintry blue sky
 murmur of snow geese
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
“Poetry is from the frontiers of consciousness.”
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Poetry is sort of a homecoming.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“Words are alive — cut them and they bleed.”
“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”
“I think poetry must stay open all night in beautiful cellars.”
“The Kings who have died one by one are now reborn in poet’s hearts.”
“A poet must achieve a balance between solitude and solidarity, between feeling
and action, between intimacy of mankind and the revelation of nature.”
“Poetry is the eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
“Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth:
the true poet is near the oracle.”
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“Poetry is a lion because it eats and intensifies natural speech.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
A poet and writer of the natural world, Terri Glass mentored under William Stafford and Robert Bly.