Action creates/a taste/for itself.

— 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

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

Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/forward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Dinners 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

Failure: the renewable resource.

— 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

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

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

I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.

— Kay Ryan

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

— Kay Ryan