Mid-day, a slightest shivering mistbut still the sun staring overyour shoulder, those wispsstealing across peripheral fieldslike several clever students late for class.The professor with the

I don’t know, Lord, but sometimes I feel like all my accomplishments could fit inside a Pez dispenser, with room left over for candy. Let

In the beginningwas the darklike the darkon the roadto Cochranewhen at highwayspeedto flick headlights offwas to flirt with oblivion the darklike the long middle-of-the-nighthall on

Overnight,new toadstoolsshoulder throughsodden grassthe way sorrowsemerge, oneafter another. Traveler,in a season doublyscented by windfallapples and creepingrot, please sidestepthe lone wet leaf,beaded with dewlike tiny mirrors.Those

          “I contain multitudes”  —Walt Whitman fugitive and scaled captorlinked by appointmentmore than accident more than appetite here I ammammal mother with childsome kind of

The kitchen radio’s whineintones catastrophe—wildfire, species loss—all breakfast long. While Ioffer a troubled gracefor oatmeal, toast, and juice,it dribbles misery down. The local news, too,

The backyard maplesspeak in fire-tongues,filling the windowswith gold light as though they were banksof candles, burningbefore great shrines,these days of the dead, in vigil and

10 January 2021—The Baptism of the Lord Falling since morninga whiteness common elsewherebut rare enough in these climescovers sights all too common here and now

The world stands out on either side/No wider than the heart is wide.—“Renascense” by Edna St. Vincent Millay How wide the world?“No wider than the