CHAPTER 1: PRELUDE With the dog half dead, winter mice sneak into the house to empty his bowl.           CHAPTER 2: SUMMER NIGHTS They follow…

  In “the excitement of firing” one young soldier on the roof of No. 25 Northumberland Road knocked himself unconscious with the butt of his own rifle, while his comrade,…

  There had been cat-stink out by the bushes, and I was scared for the song-thrush, its nest a chalice of grass and twigs, carpeted   with mud and human…

  A blessing on the endurance of childhood, each moment a lifespan and a whole hour runs over   the horizon. Blessing on the hard rooms of old age, a…

  The god Hephaestus had it, too. A yoke. A plow. A word   for punishment in public: pillory. From Kyphon,   meaning bent or crooked. I greet the diagnosis…

  In evergreens gravid with snow,       the red startles, a sudden flare-- you see      the rounded wind of bird, an exhalation,         …

  At times we believe we have been wronged, so perfectly and bankrupted, that someone must come to redress us   and does so— a stranger appearing who reveals an…

  It’s still there. So are my dead parents in their bathing suits and white terrycloth robes, trundling their beach bags, chairs, and umbrellas. The path connects woods to river,…

  I have been reading your better servant George Herbert again, and I’m trying to turn my day into prayer, praying as the toast rises with the toaster’s tinny bell…

  You will not remember my face, said the Angel, in the imperium of woe, but there are some compensations to be had by the eye:   the cities in…

  I always keep averting my eyes from who I am. I don’t know whether this is true Of everyone I know sitting beside me At dinner at a restaurant…

  Flower baskets drool petals and the teenage girl in her pink and black skull pajamas walks beneath the flowers without hurry.   Parts of the morning are still in…