Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Contents; Nostalgia for a World Where We Can Live; What a year looks like: drenched. So soggy here. So much; No apples on the apple tree this summer, and if there were; Another late summer early quiet blue-skied morning, my son; On either end of this year, on either end of every goddamn year, ; When we turn the calendar's page, my little boy looking; The dark flurry of another morning purred; This afternoon the sky's making the kind of promises it can; Days the hours are no more fact than the unbelievable; Sometimes being here is like

To scale, yes, days to scale, even when they grow so clutteredJust before the blood draw the other morning, I filled in small; We loved the rush hour most, the cars suit-filled, briefcase-heavy, ; Today, three flights up, with my whole body, I lifted; Some disasters are given names, others called after; The truth is I have trouble forgiving most things, although I've never minded; By rote the body learns nearly everything, after; It's true. There are places we'd rather be; Not quite another season, but almost, and on the window ledges,

How I wish more things I read I misread, like the bodies in the mineBecause you're still in another time zone disparate things; The problem is the revolving door, this; Because I wasn't thinking peninsula; If there's a joke more complicated than "knock-knock," more; Too lazy to lip-read in noisy rooms, the other night; A kind of stutter, that over and; Down the hall the accordion man turns into a door; Long before the horse pulls up lame there is the matter; Back to this wind, up against it even, ; The linens soften, now threadbare, just as I'm waking, small, in this

When morning was almost unrecognizable as morningWhat the wind kicks up, what the waters trouble, even; The forecast's calling for flurries tomorrow, and worry; At the new year, in the dark, I watched time; The lesson tonight nothing less than; In this, this snow-brightened light of a near-spring morning, I think of his glass; How quickly the body, when asked, forgets; Stay mouthed through; How quiet every end when it comes, briefest glimpse of a future; If all the love we'll know is the kind of love; Because all day the sky held back; Not only the night; Notes; Acknowledgments; Back Cover