I imagined her soul, slipping into muted sleep, slowing its swirl, dimming its spectrum of colors - until like a photo, darkening to monochrome, she would become the very depth and quiet of her own shadow. Fire slowly dims, coal blackens, into night.

Prisoners could enroll in college courses and some even taught. The people of Alabama often formed remarkable friendships with the prisoners and gave them many gifts, as well as invitations to their homes for a meal. After the war, many Germans brought their families to vacation in the South and to introduce them to their southern friends. These friendships lasted for decades.

The thing about a lake is the crazy men who fish there, in the copper- hearted flow where cold springs and greasy seaweed gather. Shimmer.  Buckle.  Fish bodies writhe beneath, more life always where one can’t reach. More life always where watching is not allowed.

They were not deer, such as the men had known in Virginia or Vermont, but antelope whose haunches flashed when the heave of portage brought the men too near. The men believed they were something they needed to kill, not just for food or for the pleasure of pursuit, but from a need to supplement,

And so, it seems it only takes one summer without rain, a drift of weeks, the world gone mean, to make a start then, offer age assent. To give surprised consent, or to at least – time bossy, brooking no dissent – begin to know there is a change now on its way. Not today. Not right away.

I dream each night our house is burning,               and I watch and watch. It consumes, I am consumed, by the pit in my gut, burning rubble. Spiders watch from the corners,               with their wide shining eyes, but do not spin a line to save me-