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

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 first hot April day the grani… was warm. Flies droned in the gras… When a car went past they rose in unison, then dropped back down.… I saw that a yellow crocus bud had…

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,

A fly wounds the water but the wou… soon heals. Swallows tilt and twit… overhead, dropping now and then to… the outward-radiating evidence of… The green haze on the trees change…

There’s just no accounting for hap… or the way it turns up like a prod… who comes back to the dust at your… having squandered a fortune far aw… And how can you not forgive?

Her sickness brought me to Connec… Mornings I walk the dog: that par… is intact. Who’s painted, who’s in… or put siding on, who’s burned the… with lime—that’s the news on Ardmo…

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,

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

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…

“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…

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 washed a load of clothes and hung them out to dry. Then I went up to town and busied myself all day. The sleeve of your best shirt

Rebuked, she turned and ran uphill to the barn. Anger, the inn… arsonist, held a match to her brai… She observed her life: against her… it survived the unwavering flame.

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…