Table of Contents
I In Mountains' Shade
Proverbs 13
Transfiguration 15
Evensong 16
The Thrush of Morning 17
Postcard from the Blue Ridge 18
Beholding Nehemiah 19
Picture Postcard from VA - Winter Landscape 20
Ordinary Time 22
Overlooking Shenandoah 22
At the Memorial 23
II All the Water Touches
Observances 27
Moving from Deep 29
Tidewater 30
Resemblance 32
Echo Song 34
Empty Chamber 35
Ode for a Crossing Fox 36
Preservation 38
III This Small Plot
Great Blue in the Cemetery 43
Crossing 45
Clearing 46
Thanksgiving Morning 47
Remembering Papa 48
Morning Business 50
Unraveling the Riddle of our Sphinx 52
After the Diagnosis 54
To Paint the Purple Finch 55
IV The Company of Women
Certainty 59
Of Moment 61
Even 62
Vanished Light 63
The Nellie Mae Fragments
i Perennial 64
ii Thaw 65
Two Women 66
Dark Intersection 67
The Photographer's Woman 68
Poet to Painter 70
A Song of Ascent 71
As A Matter of Fact 72
Mother of Moses 75
Proper Words for Birds 76
V And of Men
Unforeseen 81
Paternal Instinct 82
What History Has to Say 83
Finding the Fisherman 84
Lost in the Wilderness 86
Family Album 88
Note from the Good Land 89
Meredith's Law 90
Mending 92
A Neighbor in the Aftermath 93
Last Dance 96
VI The Wisdom of Creatures
Drake 99
Fallow Field 100
Unseen 101
Pastoral 102
An Offering 103
Snail's Pace 104
White Noise 105
Lowing 106
Witness 107
VII What Abides
Certain Light 111
Come Now 113
Keeping Silence 114
Contemplating Pluto 115
Gradual Song 116
Suffrages 117
What the Mountain Knows 118
Epitaph 120
Divinum Mysterium 121
Acknowledgments 122
About the Author 123