I’m thinking of the buck that my dog chased yesterday—how I barely got a good look at ‘em: his brown and gray and branch of antler, disappearing into brown and gray and branch of creek-bed, dried up in the June heat. How my dog shouldn’t be able to run like that—not anymore— like a kite, I mean, tied by invisible string to a fleeing thing. His back legs, deaf to the neural conversation, picked up and propelled suddenly—across creek, and street, and hill. As a child’s toy was

I would send you a photo, but you should really see for yourself. She is not just a sight, but also a place--one where you can go, a whole atmosphere of pink and white; a city of barnacled branch; a monument of fullness and fragility. So much of her is already gone-- there on the grass, a mosaic of oxidizing petals--and yet, she is missing nothing. Her blooms are more outstretched this year than I've ever seen; her canopy, so vast that when we go for a walk, a tall friend say

I am looking for a hopeless woman. Not the kind you're thinking of, drinking alone at the dive bar, dissolving into dramas on the mid-day screen. No–I want a woman who has given up those distractions, who has surrendered the search for escape, betterment, or balm. I am looking for a hopeless woman. A woman who, in the morning, before her coffee, steps outside with her aging dog, and sits where it is damp. A woman who watches for what the hawk will do and helps a worm find the