“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
Delicate repose
a butterfly balances
on a petal's tip.
My gardenia
plum, white, ready to burst
never blooms.
Mimic the sand
mimic the waves, clever
 snowy plover.
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
“Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth:
the true poet is near the oracle.”
“Poetry is from the frontiers of consciousness.”
“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 a lion because it eats and intensifies natural speech.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”
“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”
“Poetry is the eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
“The Kings who have died one by one are now reborn in poet’s hearts.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“Poetry is sort of a homecoming.”
“Words are alive — cut them and they bleed.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
“I think poetry must stay open all night in beautiful cellars.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
“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.