I trust all joy

— Theodore Roethke

I've recovered my tenderness by long looking;I'm a Socrates of small fury. The waves bend with the fish. I'm taught As water teaches stone. Believe me, extremest oriole, I can hear light on a dry day. The world is where we fling it; I'm leaving where I am.

— Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

— Theodore Roethke

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

— Theodore Roethke

Love alters all. Blood my instinct, love.

— Theodore Roethke

May my silences become more accurate.

— Theodore Roethke

My Papa's Waltz:The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenance Could not unknown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle;At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

— Theodore Roethke

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

— Theodore Roethke

Self-contemplation is a curse That makes an old confusion worse.

— Theodore Roethke

The Geranium When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail, She looked so limp and bedraggled, So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle, Or a wizened aster in late September, I brought her back in again For a new routine -Vitamins, water, and whatever Sustenance seemed sensible At the time: she'd lived So long on gin, Bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer, Her shriveled petals falling On the faded carpet, the stale Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.) The things she endured!-The dumb dames shrieking half the night Or the two of us, alone, both seedy, Me breathing booze at her, She leaning out of her pot toward the window. Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-And that was scary-So when that snuffling cretin of a maid Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can, I said nothing. But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, I was that lonely.

— Theodore Roethke