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#549. Why Do Drops of Water Flatten and Disappear after a Time?

His body so close I hear the cicada hum of his cells, and he slips away.

A Childhood in Four Acts

End of October, days recede quickly into night. Leaves fall in slow motion.

A Crow Flies Cleanly over the Cornstalks

The almanac tells them when the moon passes into ghost weather.

A Dark Place

There was no sense in brushing off or any other civilized thing.

A Dreamer’s Tale

How welcome my birth must have been to the raw soldier.

A Farmer’s Life: Xiwuqi, Inner Mongolia

For my vacation last summer, I visited the Bateer family in Xiwuqi.

A Few Delicate Needles

It’s so delicate, the light. And there’s so little of it. The dark is huge.

A Human History in the Wilderness

My grandfather committed my grandmother to a mental asylum.

A Late Valentine

Now we have the shells, the casings, emptied and scattered, strewn

A Letter to Robert Pinsky

We caress the rough. Sensuous, delectable, and yet sorrowful.

A Life with Bears

I want to focus on bears. On knowing them, and on what they need.

A Likely Story: Anniversary

Passions played among the orchids and through cherish and reveal.

A Lot Going On Up There

The hawk moves out of the way to let a little hot package of breath rise up.

A Matter of Necessity

The survival of our world depends upon the cultivation of better language.

A Model for the Priesthood

Tongue, eye, nose—which has the shortest route to the brain, heart?

A Pot of Red Lentils

I want to remember us this way—sun streaming through the window.

A Practical Mom

She can go to Bible study every Sunday and swear she’s still not convinced.

A Serious Desert

All over the planet people try to end pain: striptease, bee stings.

A Small Blip on an Eternal Timeline

I grabbed him by the face and told him life only comes to a person once.

A Smile of Fortune

She favoured me with an even more viciously scornful “Don’t care!”

A Theory and Other Poems

I have, in the long solitude of my body, asked for something else.

A Trick of the Light

My desire to be in sync with him had nearly been my undoing.

A Trout in the Milk

How much simpler and more satisfying was the company of men.

A Walkabout in Andrew Wyeth’s Painting and Other Poems

My bike, my skinny body, my pent breath was thrown to the grass.

A Winter Walk

After breakfast I set out to see what my wild neighbors have been up to.

Accounting

There was something in her voice, some awful, enduring fire.

Adams Morgan

“I just moved here and I want to get a plot in the garden. What should I do?”

Adventures of a Would-Be Filmmaker

Since I am in my seventies, it is now or never, and I know it.

Aeneas Leaves Kansas

All night the insects’ grinding jaws chewed through the darkness.

After Calling Your Detective’s Discontinued Number

I want to say hold these harp strings steady atop the tallest summit.