Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction by Ted Kooser

I. from Fishing with Blood | 1988

To Mark, My Retarded Brother, Who Lived 20 Years and Learned to Speak 300 Words

For Grandmother Beth

A Plain Philosophical Choice

Catching Turtles

Fishing with Blood

The Scholar’s Cat

He Says How It Was

Emily Dickinson’s Love

Love, for Instance

from “O’Keeffe”

She Learns to Walk

She Learns to Talk

A New Yorker Visits Her Exhibition

She Marries the Photographer

An Expert Explains Her Work

II. from Do Not Peel the Birches | 1993

Elvis at the End of History

Do Not Peel the Birches

A Long and Happy Life

Learning to Dance

My Father Takes My Retarded Brother Sailing

If I Were a Swan

A Few Lines from Rehoboth Beach

Mississippi River, near Cape Girardeau, MO

Mother of the Bride Dress

St. Paul’s and St. George’s Church, Edinburgh

Farthest North Southern Town

Burdett Palmer’s Foot

III. from Breathing In, Breathing Out | 2002

Fourth of July Parade, Albion, WA

Buying the King-Sized Bed

Cosmic Pitching

The Poet Laureate Addresses the Delaware Legislature Opening Its First Session after September 11

Rumors of Changes Circulate on Penguins

Leaving Lewisburg

Mary Rose Quotes James Joyce on the Cliffs at Bray

For the Inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton, 1997

I Write My Mother a Poem

Einstein on Mercer Street

IV. from The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives | 2004

I Escape with My Mother in the DeSoto

Elvis Aron and Jesse Garon

Memphis Discovers Elvis

Elvis Goes to the Army

Shaking Hands with Nixon

Elvis Sings Gospel

Industrial Teflon Comes into Use for Kitchen Pots and Pans

The Night before Her Third Marriage, She Watches a Rerun of Elvis’s Comeback Performance

Elvis Acts as His Own Pallbearer

Mrs. Louise Welling Spots Elvis at Harding’s Market

I Visit the Twenty-Four Hour Coin-Op Church of Elvis

Elvis Reads “The Wild Swans at Coole”

from “Graceland”

Elvis’s Bedroom

Lisa Marie’s Favorite Chair

The Mirrored Stairwell

The Meditation Garden

V. from Reunion | 2007

If Names Started Coming Loose

What It Was Like

Fayetteville Junior High

Knot Tying Lessons: The Slipknot

Small Boys Fishing under the Bridge

Ode to the Buffman Brothers

Wild Lily of the Valley

Knot Tying Lessons: The Perfection Knot

Bladder Campion

The Death of Cleone

Poem for Our Twelfth Wedding Anniversary

Through Security

Lady’s Slipper

VI. from Loon Cry: Selected and New Michigan Poems | 2010

VII. from No Need of Sympathy | 2013

Year of the Tent Caterpillars

The Purpose of Poetry

The Kayak and the Eiffel Tower

My Father and Hemingway Go Fishing

Hare’s Breath

Dancing at Your Wedding

Here, in Silence, Are Eight More

Short History of Music

Building a Cathedral

VIII. New Poems

The Swan Flies Straight at Me

On a Day That Bombs

Feeding the Maggots

Cancer Support Group with Painting by Monet

Edward Hopper’s Automat

Every Day I Touch Things

View from Space

The Gospel Truth

Poem for Record Players

The Sex Life of Anacondas

The Bar Mitzvah

The Poem I Was Going to Write

Reading the Smithsonian Magazine

Surrounded by People

I Say Your Name