Contents
Postscript to Many Letters
To My Mother
Preface to a Poetry Reading
Carol of a Father
For a Son Who Will Never Be Born
Parachutist
For a Poet Who Writes and Wonders Why
God and Man
For My Last Class of Freshmen
Open Letter to a Closed Mind
Transition
Goat-song
To a Bicyclist in France
Dying Under Drilling
Circling
To a Commencement of Scoundrels
Swim
Child of Our Bodies
Bellbeat
Lost Swimmer
Voodoo
Skycoast
Smithereens
My Roosevelt Coupé
The Jacks
The Torch of Blood
A Second Dark
The Darker Noon
Three Made One
Quartered
The First and Only Sailing
Splitting
Anticipating Yesterday, Remembering Tomorrow
Toasts for the Lost Lieutenants
For V After Z
Don Juan’s Dream of Near and Far Misses
The Johnstown Fly
On the Metroliner I Remember That to Be Is to Remember
Breakfasting with Sophomores
Radius
1. Signing the Air
2. The Vigil
3. Some Words for President Wilson
4. Napoleon’s
5. White Silence
6. Elegy for the First Life
7. Waiting for Zero
8. The Long Passion
9. All Colors End in Black
10. Understand the Highway, Understand the Country
11. The Next Time You Were There
In the Order of Disappearance
Castaway
Between Wars
Saltpulse
Regardless
To Dive
King Nothing
In Convoy
Victorious Losses
Flying Down the Dream
The Bearing
A City Made Sacred Because Your Son’s Grandfather Died in It
The Day Your Son Was Born, It Is
The Duel That Is Vertical
Night Letter to America on Switzerland’s Independence Day
Only the New Branches Bloom
Leafing
The Toys
Long Distance Isn’t
Dublin Twilight
The Silence at the Bottom of the Well
The Time It Is in Sofia
Maps for a Son Are Drawn As You Go
Silence Spoken Here
No Is the Father of Yes
The Quiet Proofs of Love
Song for the Flies of Fire
Unto the Islands
Clean Break
The Cloak of Fortunatus
The Last Photograph of John Ciardi
Harpsong
Florence by Proxy
Kak
Mary Anne’s on Any Anniversary
The First Thirtieth
Throes
No Fanfares, No Handshakes, No Salutes
Understudy
Mediterraneans
Who Promised You Tomorrow?
French Time
A Man Can Think for Just So Long Before the Body Wants Its Say
The Time It Takes to See
In a Time of No Answers
After Mercutio
To All My Mariners in One
Another Word for Time
The Real Reason for Going Is Not Just to Get There
Whatever Happened to Defiance?
On the Eve of the First Shot
War News Viewed in the Tropics
The Vow We Breathe
Lovemakers
One Flesh
How Married People Argue
Two Against the Mountain
The Year of the Horse
Not Even Solomon...
Stingers
Putting Away the Lost Summer
The Most You Least Expect
At Midnight There Are No Horizons
Soldiers Despite Ourselves
Matador
Once Against a Time
For Bill
For Tomas, Who Survived the Axe Blow from Within
The Horizon at Our Feet
To Watch with Love’s Eyes
What Waits for Us?
The Future Is the Past, Read Backward
Lines at Sea on Love and Death
Aristotle and the Snow
All Else But Sharing Is a Sideshow
Older Ways to See, Younger Ways to Say
Panache
The Bodies of Women
Losers Keepers
Those Who Have Gone Before But Stay
To Stop and Be Stopped in Lourmarin
The Order of Disorder
Mates
Failings
At the Site of the Memorial
Sweet Money
Once Upon a Wedding
And the Lot Fell to Matthias
The Holy Surprise of Right Now
Index of Titles