Contents

And So

Song of What Happens

No use closing . . .

Dark Song

Song of Aftermath—“Standing, now . . .”

Ode to Nothing

*

Reading Dickinson

Lines Standing in for Religious Conviction

Ode to Some Lyric Poets

Ode to Words

Song of Lyric Geography

*

You sat alone in a room . . .

There are questions . . .

The Undertoad

Trying hard just to listen . . .

Aftermath Sonnet—“Letting my tongue sleep . . .”

How often I’ve wished . . .

It’s narrow . . .

Aftermath Inventory—“Shattered? . . .”

For Trisha

We were that joke . . .

Ode to the Country of Us

*

Sitting at a dinner table . . .

The Ferris Wheel at the World’s Fair

Dark Proverbs for Dark Times

I Don’t Really Care, Do You?

Charlottesville Elegy

Hector Bidding Wife and Child a Last Good-bye

Downtown Tour

Lyric Revises the World

Ode to These Socks

*

Coleridge and Me

Emily Dickinson Test-Drives the First Home Sewing Machine

Into a thousand pieces?

Some phrases move . . .

Ode to Left-Handedness

Certain poems offer me . . .

For weeks now . . .

Still Life

For My Daughters

For My Mother

The last love poem I will ever write . . .

Young, I took it all so . . .

Secret Constellation

Inscription

It’s time . . .

Acknowledgments