If we are suffering the consequences of asphyxiation from the smouldering fuel inside us, we are at least aware there is a fire and fuel there to find and breathe on.

Out of an overwhelming fire that threatens to consume us we take a small ember that warms and emboldens. This process is at the heart of poetic inspiration and the poetic imagination; it gives equal place to the tiny act as the greater pattern and demands that we stop choosing between the small actions that make up the everyday and the great sweeps

if we can see the path ahead laid out for us, there is a good chance it is not our path; it is probably someone else’s we have substituted for our own. Our own path must be deciphered every step of the way.

The man who cannot simply close his eyes knowing there is image after image far inside him, waiting quietly until night to rise all around him in the dark it’s all finished for him, he’s just like an old man.

We might at first label the body’s simple need to focus inward depression. But as we practice going inward, we come to realize that much of it is not depression in the least; it is a cry for something else, often the physical body’s simple need for rest, for contemplation, and for a kind of forgotten courage, one difficult to hear, demanding not a

In my experience, the more true we are to our own creative gifts the less there is any outer reassurance or help at the beginning. The more we are on the path, the deeper the silence in the first stages of the process. Following our path is in effect a kind of going off the path, through open country. There is a certain early stage when we are left

It seems that to find the real path we have to go off the path we are now on, even for an instant, and earn the privilege of losing our way.

Those with busy lives, but bereft of the inner images based on the soul’s desires, have empty larders and no fire in the hearth;

our hope at work may be for a quiet corner out of the mainstream rush of a world that refuses any longer to play fair. Knowing we may be left behind in the fiery rush of the company as it lifts off for another continent, the very deadness of an organization may seem like a welcome respite when faced with the swift-moving nature of postmodern