After Selling Your Lake House
Another Lesson in the Lesser Miracles
Day One
Empty Pedestals
Hijrah
Laundry
On Shrugging
The Knock
The Strand at Lough Beg
The Sudden Ocean
To the Howling and Back
Toward the Pith
Truth
Walking Down
We Sit in the Red Glider These Late Summer Evenings
We Sit in the Red Glider These Late Summer Evenings
Dannye Romine Powell
and you are thinking of baseball,
while I am thinking
of my mother
who, at exactly my age,
suffered a stroke
leaving her left arm useless.
But you—you
are lifting your chin
to Jupiter or Venus and smiling
a smile you don’t even know
you’re smiling because
in your mind the bases
are loaded, someone
whose name I never remember
is up at bat, stance wide,
elbow wagging,
and I am glad
you are not concerned
with the nearness of fall,
the diamond empty,
the stadium silent
and our favorite wool sweaters
airing on hangers
hung from the branches
of the ancient viburnum—
those familiar sleeves
limp in the wind.