Editor's foreword / Elinor Benedict -- Preface / Charles Baxter -- This is the time, the place : Going north / Michael Delp -- Leaving home / John Palen -- Groundswell / Josie Kearns -- The rooftops / Eugene Ruggles -- The potato house / Norah Wood -- World travelers / Jan Worth -- Husbandry / Herman Nibbelink -- Farmer / Stuart Dybek -- Living in the ground / John Woods -- Morning / Jan Mordenski -- Before nightfall / Nick Bozanic -- Hurting for more territory / John Garmon -- Northern lights / Daniel Lusk -- A place on a slender river / Larry Leffel -- At the Sleeping Bear Dunes / Alan Howard -- Beautifying songs / Steve Crow -- The groves, the high places / Walter McDonald -- A woman's life through trees / Marla Kay Houghteling -- Meeting my father at the river / Judith Minty.

Simple holdings : Father, son, grandson / Debra Bruce -- When fathers speak for daughters / John Reinhard -- The study of astronomy / Joan Colby -- My father worked late / Jim Daniels -- Closing the cabin / Elizabeth Kerlikowske -- For John, who did not choose baseball / Orval Lund -- Coming back / Patricia Hooper -- Backrub / Steven Schreiner -- My father and mother / Sharon Chmielarz -- Jacob Stap / Don Stap -- The descendant / Jami Wolf -- Somehow we managed / Gloria Dyc -- The singing bridge / Rebecca Roberts -- Ray shows his brother the barn / Len Roberts -- Sunday dinner / Steven Klepetar -- Butchers / Markham Johnson -- Photographs / Lee Upton -- Practical arrangements / Laura Perliss -- For once / Mark McCloskey -- Simple holdings / Robert Hill Long.

The blood remembering : The flowering / James B. Allen -- The painters / Peter E. Murphy -- Love letter / Skip Renker -- Cosmic generations / Philip Legler -- Valentine Confession / Deanna Louise Pickard -- Jealousies / Rosalie Sanara Petrouske -- The origins of desire / Claire Keyes -- Cleaning toilets / Pamela Harrison -- Fever / Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Ordinary life / Barbara Crooker -- Why I couldn't love Richard / Ramona Grigg -- The God that keeps us alive / Herbert Scott -- Hooks and eyes / Beth Brown -- Drying onions / Linda M. Hasselstrom -- Early summer concert / Jack Driscoll.

The same door : Prenatal / Carl Kikuchi -- The gathering beyond fog / Cynthia Hogue -- After the loss / Diane Glancy -- A mother to a daughter / Carol Stone -- Shirt / Jeanne Murray Walker -- Anna Cernik's diary : of sons and daughters / Mark Sanders -- What's done / Duncan Moran -- Services / Lawrence Pike -- Parade / Laura Kasischke -- Drownings / David Stringer -- The survivor / Philip Legler -- Pact / Bill Brown -- Taps / John Repp -- Little bear / Robert Boswell -- Directions / Carol R. Hackenbruch -- Water lily / Jeanne Lohmann -- At Bessemer Cemetery / Peter Hoheisel -- At your going / Bergine Haakenson -- Orchard winter / Eve Shelnutt -- Think death / David James -- Gift from another country / Deanna Louise Pickard.

That foolish flying : To the impressionable children / Margo LaGattuta -- The social contract rewritten / Larry O. Dean -- Freezing weather / William Vernon -- First dance / Keith Taylor -- Territory / Stephen Dunning -- Old friend sends a chain letter / Therese Becker -- A song of ascents / Thomas Barson -- God bless you / Dean Stover -- The semidivine beings / Rodney Torreson -- Looking glass / Hillel Schwartz -- Mid-life crisis / Jane Coleman -- The asparagus eaters / Esther Ayers -- Growing a row of yellow peppers, regardless / Sharon Van Sluys -- Rosie / Sheila E. Murphy -- Fugue / Robert Bixby -- "I'm calling about your ad for the golden retriever." / Philip Dacey -- Bricks / Grace Butcher -- Dancing in the dung / Mark Powers -- Poetry reading / Kendra Kopelke.

Unlikely shifts : Small potatoes / Nancy Lord -- Music room / John Palen -- That time again / Paula Yup -- He skates from me / Marilyn J. Boe -- Sunday / Robert Post -- Sail baby sail / Dan Gerber -- Annie / Anne Ohman Youngs -- Bearwalk / Mary Emerick -- In the Luxembourg Gardens / Lila Zeiger -- Peeping Tom / Husam Nolan -- The man who waves / Susan Rea -- Dwarf / J.B. Goodenough -- December / Patricia Gilmore -- The floor / Patricia McConnel.

Whales and nesting owls : When I'm exhausted / Paul Martin -- Snowflake or bone / Husam Nolan -- A profitable fishing season / Leslie Leyland Fields -- Winter fishing / Jack Driscoll, Bill Meissner -- Watching fish / Susan Rea -- Red in the morning / Diane Wakoski -- The showing (story) / Gloria Whelan -- Crows / Michael Hettich -- Owls / Marc J. Sheehan -- Checking the neighbor's deer / Michael Delp -- Draft ponies / Hugh Ogden -- Horses / Tom Murdock -- Morning milk / John Garmon -- July 4th / Jean Schanick -- My brother's keeper / Carol Ra -- October wind / Robert Bixby -- Moths / Gary Duehr.

Omens of fire and ice : Brother fire / William Stafford -- Natural disasters / Joanna Higgins -- The love and fear of fire / Jack Driscoll -- Fires she could have died in / Margo LaGattuta -- Inside the cloud / Michelle Gillett -- The bag of stones / Jeanne Murray Walker -- Lottery / Michael Gregory -- Omen / Bill Brown -- Through the ice of Bingham Landing, 1878 / Ruth Porritt -- Woman on a sled / Miriam Pederson -- Snow : a letter / John December -- Nights our house comes to life / Matthew Brennan -- Cutting wood : Vermont, 1977 / Kevin Bezner.

Listen! : Scripture / Danny Rendleman -- My son expounds on his theory of creation / Linda Nemec Foster -- The fundamentalist argues against Darwin / John Reinhard -- Villanelle of the crucified and the risen Christ / Roger Weingarten -- The God in winter : a lecture / Conrad Hilberry -- A Berlin of the mind / Thomas E. Kennedy -- The forgiveness of sins / Phillip Sterling -- Variations on a theme by Rilke / Marc J. Sheehan -- The danger of poetry / Robert Haight -- Restoration / John Barr -- Yesterday, why I didn't call / Ben Mitchell -- How women write poems / Judith Goren -- Detonating the poem / Joseph Matuzak -- The trouble with poems / Mark Vinz -- Door hanging / Randall R. Freisinger -- Listen / Karen Blomain.