Contents
Notes and Acknowledgments
Selected Poems and Short Prose
Learning to Talk
The Cookie Jar
Things Thought Through
On Balance
Decomposition
Psycho Ecology
Life of the Spirit
Aweigh
Tao-to-Tao
To Be
Practice, Practice, Practice
Wisdom and Happiness
Red Sails
Squall & Commotion
Slow Learner
Bathing Joe
Mahogany China
The First Cut Is the Deepest
Waiting for Houdini to Come Up
The Countessa
Venison Stew
Winter Song
On Humor: On Mating Donkeys and Onions
Watering the Garden on the Hottest Day of the Summer
Palms to the Moon
A Firmer Grasp of the Obvious
The Work of Art
Steelhead Fishing, Smith River, January
The Third Bank of the River
Green Side Up
One Thing After Another
Unnatural Selections: A Meditation upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock
Fishing Devil’s Hole at the Peak of Spring
Getting After It
How to Catch the Biggest Fish
Hard Work
There It Is
Knowing When to Stop
Vacation Expenses
Basic Precepts and Avuncular Advice for Young Men
Killing
Death and Dying
New Poems and Short Prose
The Banker
The Real Last Words of Billy the Kid
The Moving Part of Motion
How About
Necessary Angels
Prayer Bones
Magic and Beauty
Day Moon
Karma Bird
The Tunnel
Hagerty Wrecks Another Company Truck
Obsession
Love Find
Flux
Thanks for the Dance
The Stone
Woman in a Room Full of Rubber Numbers
Reason to Live
Scratch
Salvage
An Epithalamium for Victoria
Falling into Place
Play-By-Play
Job Application
The Mouth of the River
The Prior and Subsequent Heavens
Old Growth
Three Ways to Get the Carrot on the Stick
Eurydice Ascending
The Drought of ’76
True Account of the Saucer People
About Time
Smithereens
Jack o’Hearts Shopping Mortmart
Holy Shit