Donna > Donna's Quotes

“Action creates/a taste/for itself.”
― Kay Ryan

“Ledge

Birds that love
high trees
and winds

and riding
flailing branches
hate ledges
as gripless
and narrow,

so that a tail
is not just
no advantage
but ridiculous,
mashed vertical
against the wall.
You will have
seen the way
a bird who falls
on skimpy places

lifts into the air
again in seconds --
a gift denied
the rest of us
when our portion
isn't generous.”
― Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

“Bait Goat

There is a
distance where
magnets pull,
we feel, having
held them
back. Likewise
there is a
distance where
words attract.
Set one out
like a bait goat
and wait and
seven others
will approach.
But watch out:
roving packs can
pull your word
away. You
find your stake
yanked and some
rough bunch
to thank.”
― Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems

“Tenderness and Rot

Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.

No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.

One is not
two countries.
One is not meat
corrupting.

It is important
to stay sweet
and loving.”
― Kay Ryan

“Weak Forces

I enjoy an accumulating
faith in weak forces--
a weak faith, of course,
easily shaken, but also
easily regained--in what
starts to drift: all the
slow untrainings of the mind,
the sift left of resolve
sustained too long, the
strange internal shift
by which there's no knowing
if this is the raod taken
or untaken. There are soft
affinities, possibly electrical;
lint-like congeries; moonlit
hints; asymmetrical pink
glowy spots that are no
the defeat of something,
I don't think.”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River: Poems

“One can't work/by limelight.//A bowlful/right at/one's elbow//produces no/more than/a baleful/glow against/the kitchen table.//The fruit purveyor's/whole unstable/pyramid//doesn't equal/what daylight did.”
― Kay Ryan

“Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass.”
― Kay Ryan

“The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.”
― Kay Ryan

“Failure: the renewable resource.”
― Kay Ryan

“In the hills giant oaks
Fall upon their knees
You can touch parts
You have no right to”
― Kay Ryan

“A thing cannot be delivered enough times:
this is the rule of dogs for whom there are no fool's errands.
To loop out and come back is good all alone.
It's gravy to carry a ball or a bone.”
― Kay Ryan

“CROWN

Too much rain
loosens trees.
In the hills giant oaks
fall upon their knees.
You can touch parts
you have no right to—
places only birds
should fly to.”
― Kay Ryan

“It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.”
― Kay Ryan

“A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.”
― Kay Ryan

“If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?”
― Kay Ryan

“Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states.”
― Kay Ryan

“Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.”
― Kay Ryan

“I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.”
― Kay Ryan

“Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/
as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.”
― Kay Ryan

“It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

"Hide and Seek”
― Kay Ryan, The Niagara River

“The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.”
― Kay Ryan, Say Uncle