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 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…

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…

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 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…

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.

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…

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

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

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.”

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

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?

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…

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

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…