Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours.

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day.

Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.

God owns heaven but He craves the earth.

For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.