Street with Pipe Smokers
     This is much better; this is perfect. Remember strolling across the park one cool autumn day and running into Mr. R., who was smoking. He smiled at you and knew you, but could not remember your name.

Automobile with Black Road
     P always did. Remember your name. Looked even once closely and fully at your face and pronounced your one name correctly. You waited for him in his black wool overcoat and found he was one of the first to have a phone in his car.

Nimble Free Hand
     It reached for you, pulled its fingers through your hair. Crocheted a bed jacket. Snapped poppit beads in and out of a fabulous necklace.

Chain of Memory
     Nimbly she planted the peach-colored hyacinths on various graves. What to do when the water rises--is that a fair thing to expect in a cemetery? I mean after your loved ones are planted don't you have a right to expect they'll be dry?

Dwelling with Staircases and Many Rooms
     I would like to go there; I am fond of staircases. And the privacy rooms should be at the top of staircases, not the bottom. I stood next to G for that photograph, and both of us were very much younger then, although no one looked better.

Flirts
     It's true I went to the baseball game with R, and he almost kissed me. We were laughing about something and I got into my car and closed the door and he stuck his head in the open window and almost kissed me. For years I was never quite sure of this.

Uneven and Ambling
     Rises and irises have a lot in common. And if it were not for our arbitrary wanting of "I" to be capitalized, they'd have more.

Theater of Aberrations
     After a while it becomes reality. This morning I was thinking about T and how I'd said something I shouldn't have said and then later she said I should have, even sooner. And it turned out that was the best thing I ever said and who knew?

Site Inhabited by Objects
     I remember where to start now, if I could only sit comfortably. Probably I can move these things around, though not nimble. Favorite of favorites, the lavender tree bush.

Surge of the Virtual
     Contraptions of ignominious proportions. Who do you think you are fooling here, the nub-rubbers? No puns allowed. A woman who loved her dog, who had stopped all drinking, even water.

Skedaddle
     C says someone wants to come over for a tour of my garden and that person would call first and that's good I think because I'm writing now and don't even want to be hearing about someone coming to look at my garden but if they call and come another time that would be good.

Married Couple Visiting
     McSomething was her married name, her single name, her banana. And the quick banana that all of us ride is this: no Freud intended. You bury the blue shells in the mud.

Red Beret
     I left it on the counter though I didn't mean to. And C left a black one in New Jersey. And all around the white counter were blue ones, blue berets, turquoise berets. That's not the color you were imagining, I know, but there you have it.