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When I go mad, I call my friends by phone: I am afraid they might think they're alone.

Theodore Roethke

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Theodore Roethke
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: May 25
Died: 1963
Died: August 1
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Saginaw
Michigan
Might
Think
Phone
Thinking
Mad
Phones
Afraid
Alone
Call
Friends

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Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.
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And I walked, I walked through the light air I moved with the morning.
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I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.
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You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
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The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
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A mind too active is no mind at all.
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The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
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What falls away is always. And is near.
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Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
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I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swamplandDisturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planetAs if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
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I came where the river Ran over stones My ears knew An early joy. And all the waters Of all the streams Sang in my veins That summer day.
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All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
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Being, not doing, is my first joy.
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Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still calledThe flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollowsAnd love, love sang toward.
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Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire
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Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will -The right thing happens to the happy man.
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So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
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How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.
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The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.
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The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
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