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"Such a palmer ne'er was seene, Lesse Love himselfe had palmer beene." Never too late. Pilgrim feet, pray whither bound? Pilgrim eyes, pray whither bent? Sandal-shod and travel-gowned, Lo, I seek the way they went Late who passed toward Holy Land. Pilgrim, it was long ago; None remains who saw that band; Grass and forest overgrow Every path their footing wore. Men are wise; they seek no more Roads that lead to Holy Land. Proud his look, as who should say: I shall find where lies the way. Pilgrim, thou art fair of face, Staff and scrip are not for thee; Gentle pilgrim, of thy grace, Leave thy quest, and bide with me. Love shall serve thee, joy shall bless; Thou wert made for tenderness: God's green world is fair and sweet; Not o'er sea and Eastern strand, But where friend and lover meet Lies the way to Holy Land. Low his voice, his lashes wet: One day if God will—not yet. Pilgrim, pardon me and heed. Men of old who took that way Went for fame of goodly deed, Or, if sooth the stories say, Sandalled priest, or knight in selle, Flying each in pain and hate, Harassed by stout fiends of hell, Sought his crime to expiate. Prithee, Pilgrim, go not hence; Clear thy brow, and white thy hand, What shouldst thou with penitence? Wherefore seek to Holy Land? Stern the whisper on his lip: Sin and shame are in my scrip. Pilgrim, pass, since it must be; Take thy staff, and have thy will; Prayer and love shall follow thee; I will watch thee o'er the hill. What thy fortune God doth know; By what paths thy feet must go. Far and dim the distance lies, Yet my spirit prophesies: Not in vigil lone and late, Bowed upon the tropic sand, But within the city gate, In the struggle of the street, Suddenly thine eyes shall meet His whose look is Holy Land. Smiled the pilgrim, sad and sage: Long must be my pilgrimage.

Costa Rica The bus arrives in the orchid heat, in the place where coffee grows like rubies in the valley’s black soil. We disembark, walk in twos so we don’t slip on the genesis mud. The woman next to me carries three cellphones as gifts for cousins and a bucket of chicken to share. How is it that I have come this far with nothing, that I am empty- handed in this country of blessings? A procession of rust-colored macaws glides above us. Their ashy shadows draw crosses onto all of our heads.

An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers, Where every beam that broke the leaden sky Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours; Some clustered graves where half our memories lie; And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh: And this was Life. Wherein we did another's burden seek, The tired feet we helped upon the road, The hand we gave the weary and the weak, The miles we lightened one another's load, When, faint to falling, onward yet we strode: This too was Life. Till, at the upland, as we turned to go Amid fair meadows, dusky in the night, The mists fell back upon the road below; Broke on our tired eyes the western light; The very graves were for a moment bright: And this was Death.

Who is your lady of love, O ye that pass Singing? and is it for sorrow of that which was That ye sing sadly, or dream of what shall be? For gladly at once and sadly it seems ye sing. — Our lady of love by you is unbeholden; For hands she hath none, nor eyes, nor lips, nor golden Treasure of hair, nor face nor form; but we That love, we know her more fair than anything. — Is she a queen, having great gifts to give? — Yea, these; that whoso hath seen her shall not live Except he serve her sorrowing, with strange pain, Travail and bloodshedding and bitterer tears; And when she bids die he shall surely die. And he shall leave all things under the sky And go forth naked under sun and rain And work and wait and watch out all his years. — Hath she on earth no place of habitation? — Age to age calling, nation answering nation, Cries out, Where is she? and there is none to say; For if she be not in the spirit of men, For if in the inward soul she hath no place, In vain they cry unto her, seeking her face, In vain their mouths make much of her; for they Cry with vain tongues, till the heart lives again. — O ye that follow, and have ye no repentance? For on your brows is written a mortal sentence, An hieroglyph of sorrow, a fiery sign, That in your lives ye shall not pause or rest, Nor have the sure sweet common love, nor keep Friends and safe days, nor joy of life nor sleep. — These have we not, who have one thing, the divine Face and clear eyes of faith and fruitful breast. — And ye shall die before your thrones be won. — Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun Shall move and shine without us, and we lie Dead; but if she too move on earth and live, But if the old world with all the old irons rent Laugh and give thanks, shall we be not content? Nay, we shall rather live, we shall not die, Life being so little and death so good to give. — And these men shall forget you.—Yea, but we Shall be a part of the earth and the ancient sea, And heaven-high air august, and awful fire, And all things good; and no man's heart shall beat But somewhat in it of our blood once shed Shall quiver and quicken, as now in us the dead Blood of men slain and the old same life's desire Plants in their fiery footprints our fresh feet. — But ye that might be clothed with all things pleasant, Ye are foolish that put off the fair soft present, That clothe yourselves with the cold future air; When mother and father and tender sister and brother And the old live love that was shall be as ye, Dust, and no fruit of loving life shall be. — She shall be yet who is more than all these were, Than sister or wife or father unto us or mother. — Is this worth life, is this, to win for wages? Lo, the dead mouths of the awful grey-grown ages, The venerable, in the past that is their prison, In the outer darkness, in the unopening grave, Laugh, knowing how many as ye now say have said, How many, and all are fallen, are fallen and dead: Shall ye dead rise, and these dead have not risen? —Not we but she, who is tender and swift to save. — Are ye not weary and faint not by the way, Seeing night by night devoured of day by day, Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire? Sleepless: and ye too, when shall ye too sleep? — We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet, And surely more than all things sleep were sweet, Than all things save the inexorable desire Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep. — Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? Is this so sure where all men's hopes are hollow. Even this your dream, that by much tribulation Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight? — Nay, though our life were blind, our death were fruitless, Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless; But man to man, nation would turn to nation, And the old life live, and the old great world be great. — Pass on then and pass by us and let us be, For what light think ye after life to see? And if the world fare better will ye know? And if man triumph who shall seek you and say? — Enough of light is this for one life's span, That all men born are mortal, but not man: And we men bring death lives by night to sow, That man may reap and eat and live by day.

When you take your pill it’s like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside of you.

Fame’s pillar here at last we set, Out-during marble, brass or jet; Charmed and enchanted so As to withstand the blow O f   o v e r t h r o w ; Nor   shall   the   seas, Or     o u t r a g e s Of   storms,   o’erbear What    we    uprear; Tho’   kingdoms   fall, This   pillar   never   shall Decline   or waste at   all; But   stand   for ever   by   his   own Firm   and    well-fixed    foundation.

How solitary and resolute you look in the morning. A stoic in your cotton sleeve. Do you dream of walking out rain or shine a truffle balanced on your sternum and passing me on the sidewalk? Or is that a smile because you interpret nothing and statelessness is where you live? How calmly you indulge my moods. See you tonight, by the sovereign chartreuse ceramics at the Met. Let's hear what you'd do differently.

☽ A Great Book can be read again and again, inexhaustibly, with great benefit to great minds, wrote Mortimer Adler, co-founder of the Great Books Foundation and the Great Books of the Western World program at the university where my husband will be going up for tenure next fall, and where I sometimes teach as well, albeit in a lesser, “non-ladder” position. Not only must a Great Book still matter today, Adler insisted, it must touch upon at least twenty- five of the one hundred and two Great Ideas that have occupied Great Minds for the last twenty-five centuries. Ranging from Angel to World, a comprehensive list of these concepts can be found in Adler’s two-volume Syntopicon: an Index to the Great Ideas, which was published with Great Fanfare, if not Great Financial Success, by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952. Although the index includes many Great Ideas, including Art, Beauty, Change, Desire, Eternity, Family, Fate, Happiness, History, Pain, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, Time, and Truth, it does not, alas, include an entry on Pillows, which often strike me, as I sink into mine at the end of long day of anything, these days, as at the very least worthy of note. Among the five hundred and eleven Great Books on Adler’s list, updated in 1990 to appease his quibbling critics, moreover, only four, I can’t help counting, were written by women—Virginia, Willa, Jane, and George—none of whom, as far as I can discover, were anyone’s mother. ☽ Missing Scenes In which Eve plucks her moustache. In which Achilles waxes his ass. In which a butterfly triggers The Tempest. In which Moby Dick performs his own stunts. In which Bashō smokes hashish. In which the Buddha buys bonds. In which the Heavenly Banquet is served with a spork. In which Galahad chugs from the grail. In which spring follows summer. In which moss grows on meteors. In which Pelé scores on the Peloponnesian Fields. ☽ Not in stock, says the campus bookstore clerk looking up from his screen with a smile when I inquire, incognito, after my books which are nowhere to be found on the shelves. We used to have two copies of the first one, he says, but no one bought them, so we sent them back last June. We never carried the second one, he adds, but we could order it for you. What’s your name? I glance up, above his head, at a shelf of Staff Picks. Between a history of disgust and a guide for saving the planet, I spot my husband’s last book, gleaming in the day’s dying light. Forget it, I mutter into my muffler, I can get it from Amazon by Friday. I go home and order an ivory satin pillowcase instead, guaranteed to reduce hair loss due to breakage and soften fine lines. ☽ No Use Wet cigarettes. E-cigarettes. A babysitter whose babysitter is sick. Nunchucks at a gunfight. Stiletto heels at the beach. Last year’s flu shot. Next year’s peace talks. ☽ Heian courtesans slept lightly, when they slept at all, fully dressed in perfumed robes on straw mats, behind elabroately painted screens upon which their noble visitors knocked softly at all hours. In their onnade “women’s script,” they kept detailed notes about flowers, festivals, and furtive trysts on delicately tinted pages stashed in narrow drawers inside their pillows. These documents, copied and recopied over the centuries by courtiers, monks, and scholars in a relentlessly modernizing Japan, provide readers today with the richest portrait of any culture of its time on the globe. I now had a vast quantity of paper at my disposal, reports the nonchalant Shōnagon, and I set about filling the notebooks with odd facts, stories from the past, and all sorts of other things, often including the most trivial material. ☽ All day I lie sprawled across my pillow watching a light crust of  snow retract across the lawn into a thin band of shade along the  fence. I watch the sun fail to rise above the Japanese maple and  drop like a coin into a slot in the wall. ☽ Therapies A to Z Art. Biblio. Chemo. Dung. Electroshock. Family. Gestalt. Hippo. Ichthyo. Jenga. Kite. Light. Music. Neurolinguistic. Occupational. Primal scream. Quantum touch. Reiki. Sandplay. Transpersonal. Ultraviolet. Viro. Wilderness. X-ray. Yoga. Zoo.

☽ Not to Be Despised A Hyundai when hitchhiking. Peanuts when traveling coach. Support hose at forty. Dishonorable discharge. Water from a gas-station sink. ☽ For a third day in a row the doorbell rings just as I am finally settling down to do some work. I resolve to settle the matter once and for all. The man on my stoop holds a shovel in one hand and  in the other, his hat. An old pillowcse stuffed with something bulky—empty beer cans?—rests on the welcome mat at his feet. For twenty bucks, he offers to clear the front walk. Behind him, snowy steps descend to an icy path winding between a dead hydrangea and the Subaru parked, as usual, a little too close to  the fence. My husband, I recall, will not be home until late. The forecast tonight is more snow. I show the man the contents of my wallet—two crumpled fives and one single—which he accepts, bowing slightly. I nod and withdraw behind the locked door. Eleven dollars, I reflect as I return to the keyboard with my tepid kombucha, isn’t bad for a half-hour’s effort. If he works fast, he could be done in twenty minutes. When I take a cupcake break in the kitchen moments later, however, I spy him out the sliding glass door, dragging his shovel behind him down the street, my icy walkway, to all appearances, untouched. Fair enough, I say, jangling my pajama pocket full of loose change. ☽ Pillow is a funny word, Her Majesty announces in the rosy glow of  her nightlight. So is Word. She sits up wide-eyed and smiles.Word is a funny word, she repeats. So is Funny! So is Goodnight,  I intone from the doorway, and dissolve in the dark. ☽ Guilty Pleasures Beating a child at checkers. Peeing in swimming pools. Watching Dateline. Drinking milk from the carton. Glimpsing one’s neighbor at home in her curlers. Glimpsing one’s neighbor at home in her curlers, watching Dateline, drinking milk from the carton. A roaring fire in July. ☽ Questionable Gestures To haggle with hookers. To roast a bride. Tax-deductible gifts. To supplement a hunger strike with juice. A post-doc at Yale School of Medicine’s Center for Obesity Research sponsored by Pizza Hut. Golden parachutes. Faux fur. Blush on a corpse. ☽ Last night I had a dream so vivid I didn’t bother to record it on my pillow. I was sipping a large stein of sangria at some sort of nightmarish gala, leaning on the arm of a once-powerful older man I’d met in college, upon whom I was now, in the dream, in the awkward position of passing literary judgment. He was wearing a white guayabera shirt with pink stitching, and what hair of his remained was slicked across a forehead speckled with age. I woke angry and aroused and could not get back to sleep. Was this a Prophetic Dream? A Psychological Healing Dream? A Belief Dream? The only option I could rule out for certain was a Dream of Daily Life. ☽ Incongruous A vegan in Vegas. A poor plastic surgeon. Tempests with names like “Trudy” and “Ted.” Perfume at a funeral. Military dolphins. Black balloons. Light rock. ☽ I read a message last night from a woman I have yet to meet beyond the dim glow of a list-serv. She lives in Tampa, if memory serves, and won a juried prize last year for a mixed-media meditation on habitat loss across America, including charts, chants, photographs, oral histories, crowdfunded films, and salvaged trash. She tracks the migratory patterns of purple martins above Wal-Mart parking lots and graphs the spawning grounds of Northern leopard frogs from the Gulf Stream waters to the redwood forests. She posts quarterly reports on her blog. She now finds herself, she confessed last night, in the unfamiliar position of lacking words. While dropping off her child at preschool yesterday, she explained,  she learned from a social worker stationed in the foyer about the sudden death, on Wednesday night, of a boy in the class. An accident at home, is all she knows. The details remain undisclosed. The toddlers have been told that ther friend now lives inside their hearts. What does that mean, her daughter wants to know. What does it mean that he is in our hearts? She doesn’t want Sam inside her, her daughter insists. Sam picks his nose. She doesn’t want Sam’s boogies polluting her heart. At a loss for words myself, I don’t reply. I sit at Her Majesty’s bedside that night and watch snowy pillows pile upon the peeling deckhairs outside. ☽ Better By Moonlight Equestrian statues. Landfills. The Grand Canyon. Sex after forty. Lawn furniture. Travel plans. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

and turn the senior citizen center into an automated assembly line. Goodbye, dross of long winter nights. Farewell, old skin cells and reek: what couldn’t come clean on a clothesline. Bundles of pillows, caroming, bouncing, sloshing along, even as more mistresses of pillows hurry through the door, hugging stained sacks of feathers like thoughts kept well past prime. Sure, they should’ve been thrown out long ago but—we paid so dearly for them.