Contents
Last of December
I.
And the Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible
A Memory of Heaven
None of This Could Be Metaphor
Th e Face of Jesus
Stem Cell
Confession
Tequila
Aubade
Craving
Doctrine
Letter to Galway Kinnell at the End of September
Half in the Sun
Weather Report
My Family Sees My Empty Hands
Forgive Me
The Secrets of Baking Soda
What if in the beginning
Invasive
A Psalm for My Children
Our Forgetting
On the eve of the Iraqi Invasion, my wife says
Jonah Begins to Think like a Prophet
The Fish in the Cage
An Island Mother Speaks
Black Water
Obituary
Veil
Again, at Daybreak
Praying
II.
Happiness
Like a Thief
Democracy
The Blessing of the Body, Which Isthe House of Prayer
Aesthetics
The Rhododendron
Questions for the Artist
The River
The Sunflower
Dryad
Gastronomy
Christmas Eve
Winter Morning
Responsibility
Farm Wives
Note to Walt Whitman
Shibboleth
After It Rained All Night, She Said He Woke Up Dead
Entering the Meadow above Three Springs Run
Some Say the Soul Makes the Living Weep
Neither Here Nor There
Why We Don’t Die
The Kingdom of God Is like This
The Saints of April
Migration
Accident
The Least of These
Happy for This
Omen
Nicodemus’s Complaint
Last Supper
For My Father’s Death, Before It Happens
III.
April Poem
Turkey Hunting
My Son, in Love for the First Time
Vernal
Theodicy
The World Can Be a Gentle Place
The Night aft er the Day the Clover Blooms
July Finds the Soul like a Ripe Berry
Puberty
Keeping Secrets
Persephone Dreams of Thomas Hart Benton
Upon Finding Something Worthy of Praise
Field Mouse
A German Farmer Thinks of Spring
Necessity
Far Afield
Consider
Note to My Wife, with Hopes She Won’t Need to Read It for Some Time
Now When We Kiss
Barn Swallows
Omnivore
Spared
Cows Running
The Sleep of Pears
Salvage
Matins
Indian Summer
Yellow Light
What I Wanted to Tell the Nurse When She Pricked MyTh umb
Solvitur Ambulando
Ananias Lays Hands on Saul
Apology to Crows
Bacchanalian Interlude
House of the World
Golden
Tree of Heaven
Ascension
Acknowledgments
About the Author