Table of Contents
1 How to Fly
How to Drink Water When There Is Wine 3
How to Have a Child 4
How to Cure Sweet Potatoes 5
How to Shear a Sheep 6
How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) 7
How to Give Thanks for a Broken Leg 8
How to Survive This 9
How to Do Absolutely Nothing 10
How to Lose That Stubborn Weight 11
How to Get a Divorce 12
How to Be Married 14
How to Knit a Sweater (a Realist's Prayer) 15
How to Love Your Neighbor 16
How to Be Hopeful 17
2 Pellegrinaggio
I Pellegrinaggio 21
II The Roman Circus 22
III On the Piazza 23
IV Into the Abruzzo 24
V In Torricella, Finding Her Mother's House 25
VI Circumnavigating Torricella Peligna 26
VII Pompeii 27
VIII At the Top of Mount Vesuvius 28
IX Swimming in the Bay of Naples 29
X On the Train to Sicily 30
XI Monreale 31
XII Lemon-Orchard Blue 32
XIII The Road to Erice Is Paved with Intentions 33
XIV Palermo 35
3 This Is How They Come Back to Us
Burying Ground 41
This Is How They Come Back to Us 42
Passing Death 43
The Visitation 44
Long Division 45
My Great-Grandmother's Plate 46
Thank-You Note for a Quilt 48
My Mother's Last Forty Minutes 49
4 Walking Each Other Home
By the Roots 55
My First Derby Party 56
Snow Day 58
Six Women Swimming Naked in the Ocean 59
Courtship Dance on Playa Luria 60
Will 62
Creation Stories 64
Meadowview Elementary Spelling Bee 65
Blow Me- 66
After 67
Walking Each Other Home 68
5 Dancing with the Devil
Thief 71
Dancing with the Devil: Advice for the Female Poet 72
Cage of Heaven 73
Insomniac Villanelle 75
My Afternoon with The Postman 76
6 Where It Begins
Where It Begins 81
7 The Nature of Objects
Ghost Pipes 89
The Nature of Objects 90
Come August, a Seven-Day Rain 92
Ephemera 93
Love Poem, with Birds 94
Swimming in the Wamba 95
Cradle 96
Down Under 98
The Hands of Trees 100
Mussel, Minnow 101
Matabele 102
Great Barrier 104
Forests of Antarctica 105
Notes 109