One snowy Christmas Eve in 1972 while walking home from a poetry reading in Cambridge, Massachusetts during a winter storm that stopped all traffic; there on the street, I realized poetry was all around me. In the silence of the snow, in the shop lights reflected on the parked cars blanketed in white; in the empty night-traffic lights turning green and red but without cars and drivers to notice them; then yellow and green again without the passing of cars and trucks, marking time that didn't matter at that moment. Stillness remained. What made me fall in love with poetry was the potential for words to transform the mundane, to open the window of the soul, while voicing the universal experiences of all men and women. And though some silences should be left alone, there is a time to lend a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves: the trees, indigenous people, children, the burden of grief bared alone, and the boundlessness of love. My work not only reflects my view, but the influence of places I have known. I hope my voice is one simple, but universal and true sound.