Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going…

— Theodore Roethke

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.

— Theodore Roethke

A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.

— Theodore Roethke

I came to love, I came into my own.

— Theodore Roethke

I bleed my bones, their marrow to bestowUpon that God who knows what I would know.

— Theodore Roethke

All finite things reveal infinitude: The mountain with its singular bright shade Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow, The after-light…

— Theodore Roethke

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

— Theodore Roethke

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward,…

— Theodore Roethke

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

— Theodore Roethke

(I measure time by how a body sways.)

— Theodore Roethke

To follow the drops sliding from a lifting oar, Head up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward...

— Theodore Roethke

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.

— Theodore Roethke

Love begets love. This torment is my joy.

— Theodore Roethke

“I Knew a Woman" I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;…

— Theodore Roethke

A mind too active is no mind at all.

— Theodore Roethke

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

— Theodore Roethke

“Epidermal Macabre Indelicate is he who loathes The aspect of his fleshy clothes,- The flying fabric stitched on bone, The vesture of…

— Theodore Roethke

Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.Rain sweetened the cave and…

— Theodore Roethke

What falls away is always. And is near.

— Theodore Roethke

“The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn…

— Theodore Roethke

But when I breath with the birds, The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessings, And the dead begin from their…

— Theodore Roethke

And I rejoiced in being what I was.

— Theodore Roethke

All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.

— Theodore Roethke

The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as…

— Theodore Roethke

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

— Theodore Roethke