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When I put my finger to the hole they've cut for a dimmer switch in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair it seems I've scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick. When I put my ear to the hole I'm suddenly aware of spades and shovels turning up the gain all the way from Raritan to the Delaware with a clink and a clink and a clinky-click. When I put my nose to the hole I smell the floodplain of the canal after a hurricane and the spots of green grass where thousands of Irish have lain with a stink and a stink and a stinky-stick. When I put my eye to the hole I see one holding horse dung to the rain in the hope, indeed, indeed, of washing out a few whole ears of grain with a wink and a wink and a winkie-wick. And when I do at last succeed in putting my mouth to the horsehair-fringed niche I can taste the small loaf of bread he baked from that whole seed with a link and a link and a linky-lick.

At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling In search of something chance would never bring, An old man’s face, by life and weather cut And coloured,—rough, brown, sweet as any nut,— A land face, sea-blue-eyed,—hung in my mind When I had left him many a mile behind. All he said was: “Nobody can’t stop ’ee. It’s A footpath, right enough. You see those bits Of mounds—that’s where they opened up the barrows Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows. They thought as there was something to find there, But couldn’t find it, by digging, anywhere.” To turn back then and seek him, where was the use? There were three Manningfords,—Abbots, Bohun, and Bruce: And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was, My memory could not decide, because There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors. All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres, Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes, Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes; And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed, Then only heard. Ages ago the road Approached. The people stood and looked and turned. Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned To move out there and dwell in all men’s dust. And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just Because ’twas he crowed out of tune, they said: So now the copper weathercock is dead. If they had reaped their dandelions and sold Them fairly, they could have afforded gold. Many years passed, and I went back again Among those villages, and looked for men Who might have known my ancient. He himself Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf, I thought. One man I asked about him roared At my description: “’Tis old Bottlesford He means, Bill.” But another said: “Of course, It was Jack Button up at the White Horse. He’s dead, sir, these three years.” This lasted till A girl proposed Walker of Walker’s Hill, “Old Adam Walker. Adam's Point you’ll see Marked on the maps.” “That was her roguery,” The next man said. He was a squire’s son Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun For killing them. He had loved them from his birth, One with another, as he loved the earth. “The man may be like Button, or Walker, or Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more He sounds like one I saw when I was a child. I could almost swear to him. The man was wild And wandered. His home was where he was free. Everybody has met one such man as he. Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses But once a lifetime when he loves or muses? He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire. And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire Came in my books, this was the man I saw. He has been in England as long as dove and daw, Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree, The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery; And in a tender mood he, as I guess, Christened one flower Love-in-idleness, And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids. From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy, To name wild clematis the Traveller’s-joy. Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear Told him they called his Jan Toy ‘Pretty dear.’ (She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.) For reasons of his own to him the wren Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men ’Twas he first called the Hog’s Back the Hog’s Back. That Mother Dunch’s Buttocks should not lack Their name was his care. He too could explain Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler’s Lane: He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay, Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say. “But little he says compared with what he does. If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray: And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away. Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool, And though he never could spare time for school To unteach what the fox so well expressed, On biting the cock’s head off,—Quietness is best,— He can talk quite as well as anyone After his thinking is forgot and done. He first of all told someone else’s wife, For a farthing she’d skin a flint and spoil a knife Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak: ‘She had a face as long as a wet week’ Said he, telling the tale in after years. With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears, Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall. As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times. On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name, He kept the hog that thought the butcher came To bring his breakfast ‘You thought wrong,’ said Hob. When there were kings in Kent this very Lob, Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry, Wedded the king’s daughter of Canterbury; For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king, Watched a night by her without slumbering; He kept both waking. When he was but a lad He won a rich man’s heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad, By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried His donkey on his back. So they were married. And while he was a little cobbler’s boy He tricked the giant coming to destroy Shrewsbury by flood. ‘And how far is it yet?’ The giant asked in passing. ‘I forget; But see these shoes I‘ve worn out on the road And we’re not there yet.’ He emptied out his load Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade The earth for damming Severn, and thus made The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham’s sages. But long before he could have been wise, ages Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer He made a name. He too ground up the miller, The Yorkshireman who ground men’s bones for flour. “Do you believe Jack dead before his hour? Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford, Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord? The man you saw,—Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade, Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade, Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d’ye-call, Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall, Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob, One of the lords of No Man’s Land, good Lob,— Although he was seen dying at Waterloo, Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too,— Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead Till millers cease to grind men’s bones for bread, Not till our weathercock crows once again And I remove my house out of the lane On to the road.” With this he disappeared In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man’s-beard. But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood, Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack’s blood, Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman As he has oft been since his days began.

The coarse croker-sack cloth she’d grown to clutch mesh-merged with her woof and pang rose to serve more like organ than protection

Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms, green sand, pebbles, broken shells. Off Suno Saki, 60 fathoms, gray sand, pebbles, bubbles rising. Plasma-bearer and slow- motion benthos! The fishery vessel Ion drops anchor here collecting plankton smears and fauna. Plasma-bearer, visible sea purge, sponge and kelpleaf. Halicystus the Sea Bottle resembles emeralds and is the largest cell in the world. Young sea horse Hippocampus twenty minutes old, nobody has ever seen this marine freak blink. It radiates on terminal vertebra a comb of twenty upright spines and curls its rocky tail. Saltflush lobster bull encrusted swims backwards from the rock.

His new hip healed in, we're working on a bluff, talking doctors and health care reform as we shove a new propane tank into place. A shape on the surface catches his eye: "Right whale," he says, but I can only see endless swells rolling in from the east. He points out the gradations of gray and green that mark deep ledge, the tide's shape along the islands and rocks, the whale's glistening back suddenly in focus. I react with the same surprise my patients feel when I observe what they can't see— a sudden shift in gaze, or a crease in a cheek, understanding how a doctor becomes like a man who has spent sixty years on a lobster boat, watching the world swim fast and shining, right before his eyes.

Nostrums? Lordy, I have seen them all. Alcohol’s the favorite. Many a quack’s panacea bottled in a cellar and hawked from door to door is thriving still. Bindweed’s supposed to heal a bruise. Cherokee remedies still survive, and slave recipes—hyssop, juniper, chives. Waitress, freshen this elixir, if you please. One day a hefty woman who works a loom down at Pepperell Mills sauntered in with no appointment and perched herself prim as an English queen in the waiting room. What happened next? For a prolapsed uterus, folk medicine recommends inserting an Irish potato. It works, if you can stand the weight, my friends. Well, she’d relied on that specific since winter. We’d hit, you understand, July, and her complaint, not one bit shy, was, Leaves in my virginia. Not beatific, no, but she was composed, no maniac, and it made some sense. What better place than a protected pocket, warm and moist? But the spud had sprouted, sent runners amok. You never know in these flatland burley counties if your manual skills will bloom as sawbones or private gardener. Deftly, I removed the obstruction and took it home. I’ve raised a whole colony in my window box, and bake, fry, or boil, I’m proud as hell of this year’s crop. The woman paid her bill with eggs and applejack. Life is a paradox. Now I’ve got to rush back and tend my flock. Got appointments at four—a pregnant lady, a leg to set, twins to inspect for chicken pox, and Marvin with his routine emergency. I guess you could say my practice is thriving. Drop by, and I’ll fry you up some shallot hash browns in Margie’s seasoned skillet, a flavor I can promise is sure to revive any ailing soul. Where do I get my onions? Don’t ask. The whole sweet world is a garden.

The way she puts her fingers to his chest when she greets him. The way an old man quiets himself, or that another man waits, and waits a long time, before speaking. It’s in the gaze that steadies, a music he grows into—something about Mexico, I imagine, how he first learned about light there. It’s in the blank face of every child, a water that stands still amid the swirling current, water breaking apart as it leaves the cliff and falls forever through its own, magnificient window. The way a young woman holds out a cupped hand, and doves come to her. The way a man storms down the street as if to throw open every door. And the word she mouths to herself as she looks up from her book—for that word, as she repeats it, repeats it.

They broke up and she, either fed up or drunk or undone, ached to get back inside. Officials surmise she climbed a ladder to his roof, removed the chimney cap and entered feet first. Long story short, she died there. Stuck. Like a tragic Santa. Struggling for days, the news explains. It was a smell that led to the discovery of her body. One neighbor speaks directly into the microphone, asks how a person could disregard so much: the damper, the flue, the smoke shelf. He can’t imagine what it was she faced. The empty garage. The locked back door. And is that a light on in the den? They show us the grass where they found her purse. And it’s not impossible to picture her standing on the patio — abandoned — the mind turning obscene, all hopes pinned on refastening the snap. Then spotting the bricks rising above the roof and at first believing and then knowing, sun flashing its god-blinding light behind it, that the chimney was the way.

They peopled landscapes casually like trees, being there richly, never having gone there, and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands were reticent as trees with those not born there, and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands. Others to them were always one of two evils: the colonist or refugee. They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing; inferring from our looks their destiny as preservation or as clearing. I envied them. To be local was to know which team to support: the local team; where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local; best of all to feel by birthright welcome anywhere; be everywhere a local... Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there before you; the original prior claim that made your being anywhere intrusive. There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam wiped them out and settled in with Eve. Whether at home or away, whether kids playing or saying what they wanted, or adults chatting, waiting for a bus, or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead, there were always locals, and they were never us.

So when you go wherever it is you will go take the moon with you and make it wear that democratic white shroud, pocketless, since rich and poor, we take nothing with us, save a small stick or dowel in the casket, so we can all burrow through the earth to the Holy Land when the time is right. Please forgive that I confessed your amusement at Shakespeare’s “mewling and puking” in my eulogy.