Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 11

I

It Was a Time 15

Before We Leave 16

The Country of the Next Thing 18

Tracks 19

Cleaning Up 21

Thank You 23

Nothing to Hold Onto 25

Something Needed To Be Done 27

Now, Finally 30

Anniversary Poem 32

Intrusions 33

Betty Friedan's Final Advice 35

In Love, His Grammar Grew 37

Formalities for the Long Road 38

II

If The Poet 43

III

The Little Details 47

Those Without Final Residence 48

Reconstruction 50

Archaeology 52

Another Argument with Jim About the Soul 53

Their Loneliness 55

The Chicken and the Egg 57

Delicacies 58

Testimony 60

The Man With Three Horses 61

Old Past, Near Past 63

Pedagogical 65

For My Son 66

Out of Respect 67

Feathers 68

IV

A Coldness 73

Letter to the Man I Once Was 75

The Party to Which You Are Not Invited 77

The Proliferation 79

Maggie and the Gauchos 81

The Widening 83

Odds Are 86

The obvious 87

Ache 88

For the Player 89

In Another Country 91

The Statue of Responsibility 92

Sea Level 94