EARLY MORNINGS
It was country so flat...

MOON ROAD
Starting out along the beat-up asphalt...

BUSRIDE
We are rolling. Snow and stubble...

GOING HOME LATE
It's late and the clock downtown...

YOU KNOW
You know who...

LATE OCTOBER
I am rain-tranced, fed with sleep....

URIA BYLER'S ELEGY FOR PALMER LEHMAN
Palmer Lehman has been gone for quite a few years....

A GAME
Well worn, stinking...

FOOT-WASHING
. . . having loved his own which were in the world...

EAST ON 46
Fog spiders out its net...

MEMORIAL DAY: DIGGING THE GARDEN
Just less than spade deep...

R.T.
went out of...

ON THE ISLAND
This guy drinks a lot and rides his legs...

THOSE COWS: THEIR DOUBLE LIFE
They come ambling around the shagbark stand...

HERBAL
Call it Cleavers, Jupiter's Nut...

BUZZARD
Ten turns above the woods...

FLYING WITH THE CROWS
Enter March. Wind scants...

HERONS STAND
Herons stand on stick legs...

CONFUSION
Those horses have necks...

TO TURTLE
The round house and the...

MY ANCESTORS
My ancestors abound within me...

ATLEE MULLET'S EXPERIENCE
I too had an experience ...

THE TEMPTATION
The tree was hollow and I...

TEETH
Blank white. My coat is full of wind....

WHOSE MOON
What about that bird...

A NEW WORLD
Waking up, I see it's all different....

FLAT LAND
At the edge of the world, the sun burns....

GNAW
I may have made a mistake here...

PLOT

The sad story
of how we got here
blent and complex as soup

Man O Day
the old guy says
pointing his finger at doom

We turn to face him
at the end of part one

Mockingbird enters
by voice only
we think we hear words
but they are not repeated

(suspect mockingbirds
of symbolism)

Everything hinges
on the third-from-last chapter
and what we do to ourselves then
to move toward
the little dot
we can only imagine