Once, she only had to breathe in the spices that came from his very pores—from the skin between his legs and under his arms. Even his neck had tasted different to her, honeyed and never bitter like some of her other boyfriends.

Once, she only had to think about Tommy on her way home out of the city, and her hands would grip the wheel and her foot land hard on the pedal, that familiar hunger between her legs transporting her to a kind of madness.

"You're just a dog in heat." Tommy would laugh back then, pulling her to their bed.   Continue…

Maddie Larson drives up to her house, exhausted from the heat and drama of the day. Lola barks her usual greeting, jumping up and down against the chain-link fence of her pen like a yoyo. Dusk's shadows have started their long sweep of the yard, but Maddie can still see the large pots of white geraniums out across the lawn that must be watered. Inside, she lets Lola in through the door that connects the pen to the downstairs sunroom. The little black dog will be looking for Don, Maddie knows.

"He isn't here, Lola," she says, more to herself than to the racing fluff in motion up the stairs. In the kitchen, she thinks about food. She's had nothing since breakfast except a cup of machine coffee at the hospital. But she should water the flowers before it gets too dark outside, before the usually hidden life of the mountain descends, driven down by the drought.

In all these years they've seen very little wildlife in their yard, but then, there's never been a drought like this summer's. Maddie saw the first deer one evening after dinner just inside the trees around the edge of their property. Only a flick of its white tail gave it away in the fading light. Later more came and, under the cover of darkness, ventured across the lawn, picking at the dry stubble that had needed no mowing for several weeks, past the once glorious flower garden—now brown and wilted—and finally into the field at the bottom where they disappeared into the high silver grass as if slipping into water. Two nights ago, one deer walked boldly along the now familiar path with a black cat by its side the entire way. Maddie was strangely moved by this. Was there a bond between the cat and the deer, she wondered—a friendship—or did they walk together for protection against the coyotes she'd seen recently shadowed along the tree line?

Now as Maddie fills two big watering cans from the outside faucet, she thinks about it again. Was it an omen?   Continue…

That's what David Cole wanted to do—put his house in order. Not an easy task for a man who just became a septuagenarian, although he was in relatively good health except for the aches and pains that came and went as harbingers of things to come.

Too many things had fallen down over the years and had to be propped up, or gotten rid of, or thrown out. By God, he still had life in him. Maybe ten good years before his body would begin to crumble. Not a bright prospect, but he was a realist, or at least tried to be one.

He made a list of what he had to do; it was written on a small, folded piece of paper he kept in his wallet. It was his talisman. Several times a day he'd think about the list, sometimes reading it to reassure himself that he had a set of very specific goals that, once accomplished, would make him a free man.

Making and keeping a "to do list" was something he had never done. He could keep his future actions in his head, but the few things on the list were different; they were promises to himself. If he failed to keep them, he would have failed himself, something he had done many times during his seventy years and did not want to do again.

There were only three things on the list: sell house, legally separate from Nicole, and start a new life. He was tired of sleeping on the living room couch while Nicole slept behind the locked door of the bedroom they once shared. An arrangement that he once thought would be temporary was now ten years old. As a result, their relationship had deteriorated into an adversarial contest to see which one could out yell the other. Endurance was what was needed, and he had to admit that his had diminished over the years.   Continue…

In Santa Fe, in the summer, the clouds build up over the mountains in the afternoon and around three o'clock they rumble down the canyon and pour rain on the city for about an hour, sometimes so hard that driving can be almost impossible and small rivers flow down the streets.

Two blocks past the elementary school the girl stood under a cottonwood tree in the downpour, hunched over trying to find the least wet spot under the branches. He drove past in his car and she looked through the window at him. He looked at her in the rearview mirror and saw her turn and watch his car. He stopped, backed up and stopped again in front of her, leaning across and rolling down his window. "Hello! Do you want a ride?"

With raindrops hammering down on the car roof he could barely hear her small voice say, "No thanks."

"Well, do you live close? Or do you know somebody nearby?"

Again quiet. "No. My mom's supposed to pick me up. She's late so I'm walking home."

"Well come on, get in my car at least and we can wait for her."

Her face dripping, long black hair starting to plaster to her head. "No, I can't. I'm not supposed to talk to you. I'm not supposed to talk to people I don't know."   Continue…

If you were above it all somehow, at a window, say, and high enough over the street to be able to see what happened, but not so far that the details would be blurred. Many floors, or maybe just a few. Six, say. If you were in a room on the sixth floor of a ten-story hotel and you were at the window, having a smoke, say. In a nonsmoking room. With your morning coffee and the newspaper waiting. The bed still warm. The sheets a mess. Your hair a mess too. His shirt on your back. No, not his shirt, because he was already gone by then; that's why you were at the window, not for the smoke, you don't smoke, not anymore, not since you watched your mother gasp her last.

You were at the window so you could watch him go. You were wondering if he might look up and see you there. He was at the crosswalk; he was waiting for the light, and it was early by some standards. By your standards. The street was full of cars, and the sidewalk was full of people, considering that this was not a big city. This was not New York, and downtown hadn't been the same since the flood three years ago that rose up to the middle of the first floor of the buildings around here and left a fish in the lobby of the hotel and ruined the public library, washed away police records and evidence rooms, made a mess of the little houses in the pocket closest to the river, where you used to live, where you grew up.

Still, this was his hometown, and he kept his downtown office, determined to move back in and get back to normal as soon as possible. He had the place cleaned up and set to rights in record time. Hardly missed a day of work, because he loved his job, at least the concept of it if not the actual content. Which was insurance. And there's an irony in that, I know.

So he was at the crosswalk waiting for the light, and maybe you were disappointed that he didn't happen to look up to see you watching, to see you admiring him—the square of his shoulders, that open circle of bare scalp at the back of his head, gleaming because it was warm and he was hatless. Someone next to him—a younger man he might have known—said something to him, and he replied, and the light changed, and he began to cross toward those who had begun to cross toward him from the other side.   Continue…

I'm virtually adopted by the race director before I even get to New Zealand. Your money's no good here, Hooksie writes in his email—just bring something unique from where you're from for your billet (his word for host) family as koha (Maori for a gift). Triathletes often feel like family, perhaps because we don't really compete against each other, we compete against ourselves. Or maybe it's because we embrace self-torture so wholeheartedly that only our fellow sadomasochists can ever understand us.

Shane Hooks is his real name, and the race is called Hooksie's Half. It's famous, if only because of Hooksie's reputation for doing whatever he wants, pissing racers off, or for the "after" party at which attendance is required.

Here's how it works, he writes: Tell us what flight you're on, I've got a billet family that will pick you up, put you up, take you down; you won't need rental cars, nothing, the last thing you'll be is lonely. It'll cost you though. You have to help out at registration on Friday, and bring a box of cold piss (his word for beer) for me for brokering the deal. You pay up at the after party. Walking in with twenty-four cold ones on your shoulder'll make you look like a real cool Kiwi chick. I'll tell Virgil to clean out the spare room.   Continue…

Surrounded by books—books on his war—poetry books
Print crammed into every nook, he sat and waited for
Whatever might come, might stay away, need clearing away.   Continue…

So, I'm writing elegies and taking liberties with so many conventions.
No enlightenment at the end, no nymphs and shepherds dancing along
The way. That's okay—the failure in freedom of the last and this century.   Continue…

How do we assess a life, a voyage of close
To seventy years, a twinkle in the span of a country,
Of less than a century? Assessment fringes us,   Continue…

For Federico

Harsh winds blow in from the Gulf past Patty's Island
And against my grandmother's home. They beat against me
And against the fishermen who go out at night to drag nets
Through shallow bays, catch mullet— subsistence living. Hard   Continue…

A little dizzy, back to sleep until 9 a.m,. and then
To work. Always work to do, better than just
Hanging out on the couch. So that, when
We realize there is much to do, we can adjust,   Continue…

Robert Frost said it best: Back out of all this now
Too much for us… this "now" and that "then."
Birds, animals, children, all whistling, the cow
Lowing, soft, spiraling moos of content…or not.   Continue…