Here I heard the snorting of hogs trying to re-enter the under earth.
Here I came into the curve too fast, on ice, touched the brake 
	pedal and sailed into the pasture.
Here I stopped the car and snoozed while two small children 
	crawled all over me.
Here I reread Moby Dick, skipping big chunks, skimming others,
	in a single day, while Maud and Fergus fished.
Here I abandoned the car because of a clonk in the motor and
	hitchhiked (which in those days in Vermont meant walking
	the whole way with a limp) all the way to a garage where I
	passed the afternoon with ex-loggers who had stopped by to
	oil the joints of their artificial limbs and talk.
Here a barn burned down to the snow.  “Friction,” one of the ex-
	loggers said.“Friction?” “Yup, the mortgage, rubbin’ against
	the insurance policy.”
Here I went eighty but was in no danger of arrest for I was blessed-
	speeding, trying to get home to see my children before they
	slept.
Here I brought home in the back seat two piglets who rummaged
	around inside the burlap sack like pregnancy itself.
Here I heard again on the car radio a Handel concerto transcribed
	for harp and lute, which Ines played to me the first time,
	making me want to drive after it and hear it forever.
Here I sat on a boulder by the winter-steaming river and put my
	head in my hands and considered time—which is next to
	nothing, merely what vanishes, and yet can make one’s
	elbows nearly pierce one’s thighs.
Here I forgot how to sing in the old way and listened to the frogs at
	dusk.
Here the local fortune teller took my hand and said, “what is still
	possible is inspired work, faithfulness to a few, and a last 
        love which, being last, will be like looking up and seeing 
        the parachute turning into a shower of gold.”
Here is the chimney standing up by itself and falling down, which
	tells you you approach the end of the road between here and
	there.
Here I arrive there.
Here I must turn around and go back and on the way back look
	carefully to left and to right.
For when the spaces along the road between here and there are all
	used up, that’s it.