The grasses in the field have topp… and in places it seems that a larg… absent, animal must have passed th… The hay will right itself if the d… turns dry. I miss you steadily, pa…

A second crop of hay lies cut and turned. Five gleaming crows search and peck between the rows. They make a low, companionable squ… and like midwives and undertakers

The dog and I push through the ri… of dripping junipers to enter the open space high on th… where I let him off the leash. He vaults, snuffling, between tuft…

Searching for pillowcases trimmed with lace that my mother-in-law once made, I open the chest of dra… upstairs to find that mice have chewed the blue and white lin…

The young man, hardly more than a boy, who fired the shot had looked at him with an air not of anger but of concentration, as if he were surveying a road,

The young bull dropped his head an… Only a wispy wire—electrified—kept… apart. That, and two long rows of… An ancient apple tree blossomed prodigally pink and whit…

On the way to the village store I drive through a down-draft from the neighbor’s chimney. Woodsmoke tumbles from the eaves backlit by sun, reminding me

The shirt touches his neck and smooths over his back. It slides down his sides. It even goes down below his belt— down into his pants.

Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole. It fell with a… and thud on his side,

“Give me some light!” cries Hamle… uncle midway through the murder of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry s… courtesans. Here, as in Denmark, it’s dark at four, and even the mo…

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn,… up the bales as the sun moves down… Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles

Drugged and drowsy but not asleep I heard my blind roommate’s daught… helping her with her meal: “What’s that? Squash?” “No. It’s spinach.”

The others bent their heads and st… Confused, I asked my neighbor to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeke… who brought raw milk to school fro… herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue…

I am the blossom pressed in a book… found again after two hundred year… I am the maker, the lover, and the… When the young girl who starves sits down to a table

It is always the dispossessed— someone driving a huge rusted Dodg… that’s burning oil, and must cost twenty-five dollars to fill. Today before seven I saw, through