I planted the little curl of skin under the magnolia. For a long time I could not remember the name for it, because though I had heard the word and its definition many times, when confronted with the tiny curl of flesh, the word did not seem to resemble the thing I held in hand, as words so often do not resemble the things they represent, or what we imagine them to represent; words can even destroy in their saying the very thing for which they stand. The little curl was pinkish, like an overbred white rabbit’s eyes, and yellowing white, like the petals of the magnolia blooms, and a soft blue; and it had a crust of red, for no one had washed it, those who might have done so unprepared for the request for it, so they handed it over in its sullied form, which made it, I thought, more beautiful. And then I did not know what to do with it, for it seemed of great value to me, the purest portion of the man-child’s pleasure returned to god, so that the small rain of god might overshadow the rest of his pleasure, make a fertile field of it; and it seemed that the pain, too, the boy had felt when the knife peeled the portion away, and the pain of the one watching, who was afraid to follow the ancient covenants and afraid not to, were folded into this piece of flesh. So I planted it in the black dirt at the crest of the field, and then I planted the magnolia over it. That was the order, first the little petal, now dried, and then the new bush, and in one year or two the bush made blossoms that began as furred buds, like the budding horns of young deer, and turned into large flowers that seemed to have been pieced together with curls of flesh, but magnified, as if under glass, magnified and made dazzling by the sun.

The Orchard

I saw the dog in a dream. Huge white

Boney creature. Big as a horse. At first

I thought it was a horse. It was feeding

On apples. As a horse might. Though not

With a horse’s patience. For it was starving.

Its hipbones were empty bowls. The horse

Wolfed down the apples. Without breathing.

Without looking up. The way a dog wolfs

Down meat. And then it growled. And I saw

That the horse was a dog. But the apples

Were still apples. Windfall from the orchard

Above the lake. Pitiful place. The few trees

There grow black and yellow. And the thin grasses

Stagger down to the abandoned north field,

Which floods in winter and then freezes—

Blue ground, marbled with red and white,

Like a slab of meat—and when the far deer

Cross over it, and the birds cross over it,

It is as if the memories held within