Contents
 1
 My Mother's Poem
 The First Movie
 The Other House
 My Snake
 Fan Dance
 Whistler's Mother
 The Red Hat
 The First Touch
 Elegy for a Safety Man
 How Johnny Nolan Rescued Me
 Passing the Road Gang
 Curtsy
 Talk
 Crane Fly
 Homework in Social Studies
 Castle
 My Father's Dance
 2
 The Invitation
 What Do I Know?
 A Lesson from a Student
 An Assignment for Student Playwrights
 In the Green Room
 The Heaven of Actors
 A Visitor Calls on Joseph Conrad
 Catfish
 Mr. Bones
 On Being Asked by an Assistant to the Governor of the State of
 the State
 of Washington for an Appropriate Quotation from a Native
 American to Conclude an Inaugural Speech
 An Assignment for Senior Citizens
 Trying to Write a Poem While the Couple in the Apartment Overhead
 Make Love
 The Moth
 3
 In Youngs Creek
 Stopping Along the Way
 Blind Instinct
 That Bird
 Meadowlark
 A Pastoral Elegy for a Pasture
 Watching a Boa Constrictor Yawn
 The Escaped Gorilla
 Judging a Hog
 Thoreau and the Mud Turtle
 The Elephant's Graveyard
 Falling Behind
 The Hunters
 For the Man Who Taught Tricks to Owls
 On a Glass of Ale Under a Reading Lamp
 4
 5
 Owning a Creek
 Up Against the Sea
 The Right Way
 On an Island
 Rescue
 Upstream
 Letting the Grass Grow Under Your Feet 
 Cemetery Grass
 The Heart of the Forest
 5
 Free Fall
 The Presumption of Death
 For an Old Woman at the Gate
 Being Taken for a Ride
 The Driver
 The Follower
 At the Scene of Another Crime
 Stakeout
 Changing Rooms
 In the Dark Room
 6
 What the Houses Were Like Then
 Man Overboard
 Moving Through Smoke
 Unarmed Combat
 Attention
 At Ease
 Under Fire
 Night Reconnaissance
 The Stand-up Cell
 What the Stones Say
 On First Looking Through the Wrong End of a Telescope
 The Center of Gravity
 An Old Man Sitting Down
 (Contents-3) 
 An Old Man Stacking Firewood
 The Old Men
 The Hero
 7
 The Eve of the Festival of Venus
 8
 Between Neighbors
 On Deck
 Fighting the Blizzard
 What Billy Graham Said to Me at the Fair
 In the Emergency Room
 Weeds
 An Informal Elegy for Neckties
 Looking Respectable
 Doing Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
 What to Do All Day
 Thoreau and the Quagmire
 At the Deep End of the Public Pool
 In the Graveyard of Major Appliances
 6
 The Solution to Yesterday's Puzzle
 Knots
 Cell Division
 A Snap Quiz in Body Language
 For a Man Who Wrote Cunt on a Motel Bathroom Mirror
 Night Song from the Apartment Below
 Desire
 The Spider's Eye
 The Day I Believed in God
 A Congo Funeral