Images leap with him from branch t
brighten, his head cocks, he pause
alert.
And when I see him I want to hide
The other wood is past the hill.

The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my w
Once, she brought me a small rabbi
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table

When I walk in my house I see pic
bought long ago, framed and hangin
—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Hen
that I’ve cherished and stared at
yet my eyes keep returning to the

1. I see no reason to spend your l
An ambitious project—but sensible,
2. If I recommend ambition, I do
Every now and then I meet someone
But I just called high ambition s

December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church fest
red and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday Scho

Between pond and sheepbarn, by map
Rebecca paces a double line of rus
in a sandy trench, striding on bla
creosoted eight-by-eights.
In nineteen-forty-three,

Twelve people, most of us stranger
in Ann Arbor, drinking Cribari fr
Then two young men, who cooked him
carry him to the table
on a large square of plywood: his

Mount Kearsarge shines with ice;
snow slides onto snow; no stream,
budges but remains still. Tonight
we carry armloads of logs
from woodshed to Glenwood and buil

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the br
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s fl

All winter your brute shoulders st
and steerhide over the ash hames,
sledges of cordwood for drying thr
for the Glenwood stove next winter
In April you pulled cartloads of