“Coming Home at Twilight in Late… We turned into the drive, and gravel flew up from the tires like sparks from a fire. So much to be done—the unpacking, the mail

“Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyo… 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

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by… The world begins at a kitchen tabl… we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and… table so it has been since creatio…

“Today” by Billy Collins If ever there were a spring day so… so uplifted by a warm intermittent… that it made you want to throw open all the windows in the house

“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times… because his son is asleep on his s… No car must splash him.

“For What Binds Us” by Jane Hir… There are names for what binds us: strong forces, weak forces. Look around, you can see them: the skin that forms in a half-empt…

“They Sit Together on the Porch”… They sit together on the porch, th… Almost fallen, the house behind th… Their supper done with, they have… The dishes–only two plates now, tw…

“Anthropocene Pastoral” by Cather… In the beginning, the ending was b… Early spring everywhere, the trees… pink and white, lawns the sharp gr… that meant new. The sky so blue it…

“Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins The name of the author is the firs… followed obediently by the title,… the heartbreaking conclusion, the… which suddenly becomes one you hav…

“Dishwater” by Ted Kooser Slap of the screen door, flat knoc… of my grandmother’s boxy black sho… on the wooden stoop, the hush and… of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned…

“A Song on the End of the World”… On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net… Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

“Where I’m From” by George Ella… I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachlori… I am from the dirt under the back… (Black, glistening,

“The Farm” by Joyce Sutphen My father’s farm is an apple bloss… He keeps his hills in dandelion ca… and weaves a lane of lilacs betwee… and the jack-in-the-pulpits.

“So Much Happiness” by Naomi Shi… It is difficult to know what to do… With sadness there is something to… a wound to tend with lotion and cl… When the world falls in around you…

“A Blessing” by James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester… Twilight bounds softly forth on th… And the eyes of those two Indian… Darken with kindness.