If I am also a visitor / to this life, why do I worry so much / about whether we should keep / the mop-headed dog, his impatient pawing? …

Sauerkraut festival, sauerkraut ice cream from a tiny paper cup. / Places you could get lost in. Bike path that wound by the old airport, / abandoned playground…

I watched lamplight meet dark camellia / leaves against faint pink sky. Out there, / slow churn of car tires, feathered / stillness. Maybe an owl…

You were the mine shaft. I was the yellow-knitted flowers / around the narrow dirt path / at the edge of the cliff. You were the view / peeking over. You were the shapes…

I grew so long next to the fields / I thought I was one of the corn stalks, / stubborn & crowned / in golden floss, weathery spears. / I pushed the dirt…

You find him again in spring: / under fall’s earthpack of leaves, / small soft body. To name him something you don’t already know…

…and I didn’t know what a warmth it could be / to have someone unexpectedly carrying your image— / textured paper tucked in / with books and belongings…

What tin-can lanterns / pricked with screwdrivers / used to prophecy onto the grass. / That earlier world / when winter bloomed / into nuthatches and we all / played with fire…

Past where Jacob pounds nickels / into rings in the rain, a hillside dripping ivy, / bristlecone, little blue stars // I don’t know the names of…

In his aunt’s pink kitchen, I pick my nails, squeeze / my thighs in the cold sweat of the air conditioning, / t-shirt sticking to the floral cushion…

Suddenly I was a body, a bed numbered / under fluorescent lights. Veins opened / but given the all quiet…

Half-moon in the camp dish. / Which dark night is this? / Bar of soap in its plastic bag. / We forgot the salt. / Gas station tea again. …

Lean-to in the field grass, / away from the house. Small goat / my father gave breath to, named / Star…

That weekend, goats nibbled my hair, my ears / as we sat on the prickly hay in raincoats, / the day warm and saturated, humid as promises…

In the piles in the backyard / he and I sat in June’s pumped-up sun, half-blinded, / sifting through rocks and crystals, winter’s lump and strand…

By my sickbed I kept on small flower / in a jam jar. At night the sky / widening above the flickering bats. / The white lawn chair…

All summer I served strawberries / mashed to pulp, stirred with sugar / until the gritted crystals gave in / to goo…

Island mornings raised / like cattle. Mother stringing a God’s eye, / dying the melted wax with crayon…

it grows wild in you, moss / and swamp. twenty black / goose heads turn toward // you in twilight, speak…

At thirteen a man tried to teach me to waltz, / placed his rough hand in mine, his blue eyes / better than anything I’d seen…

Suddenly this: largeness / its own kind of clarity. Want, / a field I visit again and again,/ daisies on the edge / of a desert…

Oil rises from cracked earth / & men wipe down pick-ups daily, roll out // & back again, slicked in grease & country…

The problem is it doesn't look like dying. Half moon / joined to all that unconscious blue. / I dream again of waterways…

Without knowing, we go looking / for something not there. Mushroom hunting // in the boroughs under the trees…

Because nothing else can contain it: / let the paint peel / from the elementary school / and the cicadas multiply / then divide…

season between that and elsewhere. / Pumpkins dewy in the field. Cold gathering / its darkness. You’re on a train…

I’d walk him through the cherry orchard, / balanced on my hip, a branch leaning heavy with fruit. / Each tree…

Fall comes stealthy, stealing the light, / grinding everything down to flame. A list / of things I miss / little ghostling…

I scale up the wolf-bones of the hill / where no one’s been, look out toward mine road, / pick-ups, blue river.

All summer we found edges: / spine pushed against the rusted Mustang / in the shop smelling of spilled gasoline…

When blue rose out / from the horizon & purpled / into diamond, dusk, // that hour when sunslant…

We sail through Iowa / as if it is meant for us, our passing: // miles and miles of corn / a canvas to be painted against, // Jesus…

Progress makes its white way / through hills chiseled out to tracks, / the long history of the double-stack…