“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
They arrived
white-crowned, golden-crowned sparrows—
winter's mark.
Frost on top of snow
my boots create the crunch
of potato chips.
Seven robins dot
the empty lot next door
 soon snowmelt.
“Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth:
the true poet is near the oracle.”
“Poetry is the eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”
“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
“Wine is bottled poetry.”
“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
“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.”
“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”
“Poetry is a lion because it eats and intensifies natural speech.”
“Poetry is from the frontiers of consciousness.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
“You are the butterfly and you are gone.”
“Poetry is sort of a homecoming.”
“A poet must achieve a balance between solitude and solidarity, between feeling
and action, between intimacy of mankind and the revelation of nature.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“The Kings who have died one by one are now reborn in poet’s hearts.”
“I think poetry must stay open all night in beautiful cellars.”
“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“All night wild impulses
The only way to find a path
is to set fire to your life.”
A poet and writer of the natural world, Terri Glass mentored under William Stafford and Robert Bly.