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She remembers that golden ocean, the promise of a whole new land.

She remembers that golden ocean, the promise of a whole new land.

However hard you try to make amends, they will still condemn you.

We are going south where I know that my father is going to die.

It’s there and then it’s gone, just light through the window.

“I just moved here and I want to get a plot in the garden. What should I do?”

I’ll see you on the sea, they say, but then they float past on a raft

All night the insects’ grinding jaws chewed through the darkness.

At the memorial service, I could barely hear the student read.

The author reflects on a soldier’s experience, in just six words.

The event was an accelerator. So much matter crashed, vaporized.

Death is a lack, I suppose, and love more so. But I will not falter.

He guessed it was the worst thing he had ever seen or maybe ever would.

“It was not wartime sentiment that moved me to ask you here.”

Water the boxed dirt, and up she’ll push, rising in red-streaked blossoms.

If everyone’s lost on the roads, you might as well fly. Enjoy your life.

I stand within her walls with not a shred of terror, not a word of jeer.

Waiting for a cure, waiting for the closeout sale, the black sail.

For one hundred years I followed old people to learn what I was in for.

In the morning light, I could hear Bashō hard at work.

We have harvested nothing more than the stench of middle age.

For sixty or maybe seventy years this sidewalk has been lying here.

In every pair, one shoe smells of exodus, the other of the body’s sweat.

One door teaches to read for meaning and pleasure. Another shuts.

I want to cut loose from her each wistful sigh I hear escape her lips.

His fingers traveling through these notes can assuage, I think, all pain.

Why not keep singing when another car pulls up to the light?

‘Isn’t this great?’ she said. ‘A bit of peace for ourselves?’ ‘No one could go into a cafe on their own on Christmas Day.’

I tried mightily, but no longer could I ladle those ancient words into the air.

The girl marched directly up to me, glaring, and said, “You hit my dog.”