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1 I held the framework of my life in mind with some precision. I knew when I was where — or where I was when — but not many incidents of my past had actually been preserved. Instead the frame served as a cargo cult runway, forever inviting the future to appear. I existed finally as the idea of temporal extension. 2 The creeper lineates the wall. Flowers as punctuation? Can you elaborate on the passage? Double meaning, superposition: hair standing on end makes a creature appear larger, more ferocious.

The tour has only started when I’m ambushed by that flat-lined verdigris I’d know even as a stumbling sleepwalker:landschap with tin river, cleaver of sodden pastures — marvelous for painters, says the docent, was the enormity of the sky, rarely cloudless, and she’s already turning to an Italian hillscape when I say wait! this is my bloodstream, as my finger makes brief unintended contact with the canvas, and then my voice an ambulance I tell her there should be a diagram to indicate the grazing motion, how the grinding molars of the Holsteins make the river go — or else, self-portrait in the glassing-over eye of a stickleback caged in a jam jar, left too long in the sun — but now the river is across the room because the docent has ushered me toward an upholstered bench and is murmuring, sit, sit, I have here from the staff room a coffee, here you are — and I’m making the gesture for no, those fields I ate and was made of live in me, uncloseable parentheses

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, Bake me a cake, as fast as you can; Pat it, prick it, and mark it with B, Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Like nearly all women under sixty she would have deftly avoided meeting the eyes of an unknown man— but occasionally an exception happens by chance and her unconscious skill at avoidance gets instantly replaced by a human generosity which is either inherently feminine or gender-trained, as you please; she glanced at me exactly when I glanced at her in the store at the mall and so she gave me that momentary slight smile which implies Though many men are dangerous, and I do not intend to suggest the slightest likelihood that you and I will meet or talk, much less make love and much less together conceive a sweet helpless child, still our eyes have just met and in this there is an undeniable contact between your humanity and mine and you are probably coping with some difficulties of masculine humanity while I cope with those of feminine humanity; and so I wish you well.

We had two gardens. A real flower garden overhanging the road (our miniature Babylon). Paths which I helped to lay with Aunt Winifred, riprapped with pebbles; shards of painted delph; an old potato boiler; a blackened metal pot, now bright with petals. Hedges of laurel, palm. A hovering scent of boxwood. Crouched in the flowering lilac, I could oversee the main road, old Lynch march to the wellspring with his bucket, whistling, his carrotty sons herding in and out their milch cows: a growing whine of cars. Then, the vegetable garden behind, rows of broad beans plumping their cushions, the furled freshness of tight little lettuce heads, slim green pea pods above early flowering potatoes, gross clumps of carrots, parsnips, a frailty of parsley, a cool fragrance of mint. Sealed off by sweetpea clambering up its wired fence, the tarred goats' shack which stank in summer, in its fallow, stone-heaped corner. With, on the grassy margin, a well-wired chicken run, cheeping balls of fluff brought one by one into the sun from their metallic mother —the oil-fed incubator— always in danger from the marauding cat, or the stealthy, hungry vixen: I, their small guardian. Two gardens, the front for beauty, the back for use. Sleepless now, I wander through both and it is summer again, the long summers of youth as I trace small paths in a trance of growth: flowers pluck at my coat as I bend down to help, or speak to my aunt, whose calloused hands caressing the plants are tender as a girl's.

Patience, though I have not The thing that I require, I must of force, God wot, Forbear my most desire; For no ways can I find To sail against the wind. Patience, do what they will To work me woe or spite, I shall content me still To think both day and night, To think and hold my peace, Since there is no redress. Patience, withouten blame, For I offended nought; I know they know the same, Though they have changed their thought. Was ever thought so moved To hate that it hath loved? Patience of all my harm, For fortune is my foe; Patience must be the charm To heal me of my woe: Patience without offence Is a painful patience.

from the cliff's edge, kicking her feet in panic and despair as the circle of light contracts and blackness takes the screen. And that is how we leave her, hanging—though we know she will be rescued, only to descend into fresh harm, the story flowing on, disaster and reprieve—systole, diastole—split rhythm of a heart that hungers only to go on. So why is this like my mother, caged in a railed bed, each breath, a fresh installment in a tortured tale of capture and release? Nine days she dangled, stubborn, over the abyss, the soft clay crumbling beneath her fingertips, until she dropped with a little bird cry of surprise into the swift river below. Here metaphor collapses, for there was no love to rescue her, no small boat waiting with a net to fish her out, although the water carried her, and it was April when we buried her among the weeping cherries and the waving flags and in the final fade, a heron breasted the far junipers to gain the tremulous air and swim away.

My Soul, there is a country Afar beyond the stars, Where stands a winged sentry All skillful in the wars; There, above noise and danger Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles, And One born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious friend And (O my Soul awake!) Did in pure love descend, To die here for thy sake. If thou canst get but thither, There grows the flow’r of peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress, and thy ease. Leave then thy foolish ranges, For none can thee secure, But One, who never changes, Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

We wondered what our walk should mean, taking that un-march quietly; the sun stared at our signs— “Thou shalt not kill.” Men by a tavern said, “Those foreigners . . .” to a woman with a fur, who turned away— like an elevator going down, their look at us. Along a curb, their signs lined across, a picket line stopped and stared the whole width of the street, at ours: “Unfair.” Above our heads the sound truck blared— by the park, under the autumn trees— it said that love could fill the atmosphere: Occur, slow the other fallout, unseen, on islands everywhere—fallout, falling unheard. We held our poster up to shade our eyes. At the end we just walked away; no one was there to tell us where to leave the signs.

The man vending needles at our door Was lucky to greet you. He looked poor but you acted needle-poor Where I’d have said, I don’t need ... He sells needles to prick your heart And they’ll take small bites Out of my finger in a layer of skin Where my feelings are thin. The old thread knitting together his many wools Might last another trudge To our porch: he came last year but I Refused and barely looked him in the eye. I’ve lost how many needles since then? Besides he is mute And would see how dumb we are to buy Three hundred needles for relief. But he supplied us to the end of life. I’ll give away some. And you might never use these points That push through cloth, cut to be made one.