Quotes About Connection

One way poetry connects is across time. . . . Some echo of a writer's physical experience comes into us when we read her poem.

The heart's actions are neither the sentence nor its reprieve. Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite. One bird singing back to another because it can't not.

The Promise" Stay, I said to the cut flowers. They bowed their heads lower. Stay, I said to the spider, who fled. Stay, leaf. It reddened, embarrassed for me and itself. Stay, I said to my body. It sat as a dog does, obedient for a moment, soon starting to tremble. Stay, to the earth of riverine valley meadows, of fossiled escarpments, of limestone and sandstone. It looked back with a changing expression, in silence. Stay, I said to my loves. Each answered, Always.

if you see for yourself, hear for yourself, and enter deeply enough this seeing and hearing, all things will speak with and through you.

And when two people have loved each other see how it is like a scar between their bodies, stronger, darker, and proud; how the black cord makes of them a single fabric that nothing can tear or mend. from "For What Binds Us

There is more and more I tell no one, strangers nor loves. This slips into the heart without hurry, as if it had never been. And yet, among the trees, something has changed. Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am. from "Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight" The Atlantic Monthly (vol. 277, no. 6, June 2016)

To remind us of the existence of others when we have fallen into the maze of interior, subjective life is one large part of the work of literature's windows. They keep us from stifling solipsism, by returning the personal self to connection with what is beyond it.

The griefs of others—beautiful, at a distance.

In poetry's words, life calls to life —Jane Hirshfield

Robinson Jeffers longed throughout his life ]for a poetry of 'pure undoubtable being'], but could not bear to relinquish his moral connection with the humanity he continually condemned for its self-centeredness.

Plants, stones, utensils, each thing has its individual feelings, similar to those of men," Bash? wrote.

How close to human must the breathed-in air come before it develops a sense of shame or humor?

Every pocket I put you in had its hole.

My Hunger The way the high-wire walker must carry a pole to make her arms longer you carried me I carried you through this world.

Paradoxically, if we accept our own suffering and fully relate it with the suffering of others, we transform that pain into a means of liberation.

Today, as I walked my dog on a cool clear morning, I realized that if I live long enough, I may see my grandchildren grow into adults. Someday they might become my young friends. This hope keeps me going. Jane Isay

Today, as I walked my dog on a cool clear morning, I realized that if I live long enough, I may see my grandchildren grow into adults. Someday they might become my young friends. This hope keeps me going.

It's also a nodding truth that these close relationships are built one on one. Time alone with a grandchild is golden. The flow of love is unmediated because there are no distractions. Attention is complete.

Mindful of the boundaries between us and our grown children, we make the effort to take the differences between us less personally

Unconditional love is the magic bridge that spans the generations: we love them unconditionally, and they love us back without reservations. It's a two-way experience. It grows the children and gentles the grandparents.

My happiest moments are when all my children are okay. That's just how life is. We've all been through it ourselves. It is hard, because you are so bon of their bone, skin of their skin. You feel things so strongly, if you are truly a loving parent.

My happiest moments are when all my children are okay. That's just how life is. We've all been through it ourselves. It is hard, because you are so bone of their bone, skin of their skin. You feel things so strongly, if you are truly a loving parent.

I love my life as a writer and mapmaker of family relationships.

Design is people.