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In May I can't see dogwood bloom without recalling how it once was huge as hickory till Christ was nailed to one. Since then dogwoods are twisted, small. A legend. A lie. But I can't get it from my mind. That's not the only lie I've seized: I've heard a preacher say the dead, in…

Mountain-tips soften after so much rain, the wild guesses of birds blending with air and the uppermost buds, with a god-like promotion, burst open. Especially beautiful are the brown and drunken bats who nose-dive down the barnside, not quite earth-broken.

(The Ngas of Nigeria) On the sacred counting string, we call out the names. Raffia, for light in the palms, Ivory, color of bone. Our sons let moon waters drop into their cupped hands, into bowls of wine. Wives chop corn gold as the shoulders of a moon with child. We say light arrives. We…

Man up early. Musk-melon, horse-bean, sno-pea bundled away. Birds looting the lawn. Sliding across our pond two ducks at chess. The horizon injects herself. You cringe, spot the sun stealing oranges from the pockets of mountains. That seed-spitter. Where on earth is the lard-ball you hung on a bough till it swung like a Christmas…

That's daughter, Orleen, in a tooled-leather frame; she hustles hard in back street bars way north of Nashville and the bus depot where she hollered goodbye. Brown, drowsy eyes and no money down, funneling through hours, a smudge of towns, shut-down mills, courthouse lawns; until the city slammed her awake with Dixieland jazz and the…

Red wax of the apple, small brown pears not yet figured: a perfect day's picking and still an untouched ladder slants under the seckle tree. The ashy-headed geese overhead trembling in a wedge: they too will go down in the hourglass this month, October, dingy Goya! Working until my hands are useless I hear in…