Stranger, you have reached a fabulous land― in winter, the abode of swans, magnolia buds and black leaves secretly feeding the earth― memory...

Before we come with rakes and crackling energy to clean it up, the backyard is precisely as the dog prefers it -- left alone, a natural sele...

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. Th...

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or the silence after lighteni...

From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches we bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned toward signs painted Peac...

This is what was bequeathed us: This earth the beloved left And, leaving, Left to us. No other world But this one: Willows and the river And...

At dawn this morning, a waning moon floating high in the cloudless blue, graces a perfect summer day, one that will never come again in all ...

How the trees on summer nights turn into a dark river, how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try, walking as fast as you can, b...

Wait for evening. Then you'll be alone. Wait for the playground to empty. Then call out those companions from childhood: The one who clo...

Lynn Schmidt says           she saw You once as prairie grass,           Nebraska prairie grass, she climbed out of her car on a hot highwa...

Needing one, I invented her— the great-great-aunt dark as hickory called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud or The-Beauty-of-the-Night. Dear au...

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one jour...

The best time is late afternoon when the sun strobes through the columns of trees as you are hiking up, and when you find an agreeable rock ...

Mother rain, manifold, measureless, falling on fallow, on field and forest, on house-roof, low hovel, high tower, downwelling waters all-was...

Consider the other kingdoms. The trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding titles: oak, aspen, willow. Or the snow, for which the peopl...

May, and among the miles of leafing, blossoms storm out of the darkness— windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees dive into them and I too...

When I am wise in the speech of grass, I forget the sound of words and walk into the bottomland and lie with my head on the ground and liste...

The rising hills, the slopes, of statistics lie before us. The steep climb of everything, going up, up, as we all go down. In the next centu...

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body that are to come, the motions of the matter that held you. Rise up in the smoke of palo santo. ...

Swiftly the years, beyond recall, Solemn the stillness of this fair morning. I will clothe myself in spring clothing, And visit the slopes o...