And then I'm inspired to write or is it news, right? Nature? What opens what for you is kind of what I want to ask.

Well, I think it's a combination of all those different sequences that you mentioned.

Part of my practice is that I do wake up very early in the morning because that's the quietest, calmest time of the day.

And I don't look at email.

I don't look at my phone.

I certainly don't read news or anything like that.

I try to have tech out of the bedroom and out of my office here where I work when I'm in those first few hours of showing up for the practice.

I'm curious, are there any poets that maybe are or have an affinity with the long poem that you admire or someone that you admire and look to that might surprise us?

Oh, good.

Um, so, uh, this is from my new book that'll be out in a couple weeks, The Sacred Every Day: Um, Poems of Peace and Stillness, which feels like a stretch in these times, but, um, but it's aspirational for sure.

And, um, you know, I, I'm starting with this one.

It's called Pledge of Allegiance.

I think as a poet you make a pledge of allegiance to the world as it is, as you are able to meet it, and whether that means the beauty, the anger, the grief, the whole thing.

And so Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge allegiance to the drop of snow melt balanced on the petals of a dandelion, and to the bead of weak sunlight held in its center like an all-seeing eye staring out.

I pledge allegiance to the patch of blue sky showing where quilted clouds have torn themselves apart to reveal the promise waiting beneath.

[laughs]