The indignity of it!- With everything blooming above me, Lilies, pale-pink cyclamen, roses, Whole fields lovely and inviolate,- Me down in the fetor of weeds, Crawling on all fours, Alive, in a slippery grave. — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,By pulling off flesh from the living planet;As if I had committed,… — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I… — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait. — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know. — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light upon ice-burdened… — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight… — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward... — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line. — Theodore Roethke Copy Share Image
