I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.

In a rough way the short story writer is to the novelist as a cabinetmaker is to a house carpenter.

...all them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.

But the only rhyme he could summon for 'out' was 'sauerkraut,' which lacked poetic glory. He let it go. The right line would come in time. That was the thing about poetry. It crept up through the draws and coulees of the brain.