I Praise My Destroyer Quotes

“I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds.

Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day.

Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“We are the same and not the same,
uniquely other, but with pages of shared history.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“For if I won’t leap up
and ride, who will?
And, if no one will ride,
when at last the spangly caravan is over,
silence rules,
and we are left staring
across an empty street
into the blank of each other’s eyes,
who will tell about the drums
and the cartwheels of light?
Who will say
what marvel it was swept by?”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“How I long to hold your face like a bouquet
and inhale the mysterious scent of your dreams
when the summer grass is green as a dye.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“Try to remember that, by definition,
an estimate is always wrong
(two months equals two years in dog days),
and that cost quickens with time.
Expense is a river whose rapids never rest.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“I build your robust image, knowing nothing of the woman
  whose heart you rent,
if your conscience scolds, or regret bites,
  the frets, the dreams you dream awake,
the sirens that rouse you in the night.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“I praise my destroyer,
and will continue praising
until hours run like mercury
through my fingers, hope flares a final time
in the last throes of innocence,
and all the coins of sense are spent.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems

“I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.”
― Diane Ackerman, I Praise My Destroyer: Poems