You’re sitting outside the French doors. It’s night and I’m startled to see you sitting there on a stone bench. I see your profile in the dark.

When you want to have friends over, but don’t want to spend all day getting ready, this simple but elegant dinner is perfect.

Your face is sad; you are like a stone statue outside my lighted house.

I think the last place we had our furniture was at the house where you lived as a companion for an elderly woman. We put our things in the garage. We lived among the woman’s objects....

You haven’t liked what you’ve been doing, have you?

I stayed near the corner windows of the office, the cockpit of a plane facing the Blue Ridge.

But your employment with us has been mostly a positive experience for you, hasn’t it?

The last day home from work I see a girl with long black hair, dancing in a field.

You really want to be doing something else.

I want the dusk light falling in sheets. I want to gather the blue between the stars at the point of turning black.

It will all be a distant memory.

I shut...

Those exacting standards of yours can be ruinous to romance.

I loosen the reins until my hand lets go and lies on his quivering neck. I can be thrown anytime, my foot caught in the stirrup.

Be patient with him, as he must shed prior entanglements. He’s worth the wait!

I fish while I wait, letting the fish go after I catch them. A few get tangled in the lines, their gills gasping for water.

In August, an unexpected windfall enables you to make a major purchase, the summer house, condo, or sports car you’ve longed for.

I’ll take the...

The train passes different colored sailboats on the river. Some are arranged together, some stand alone beneath steep overhanging cliffs. My nephew hides behind my sister’s legs when I go to meet them. He comes down the stairs after a bath, his hair parted on the side. His younger brother barely notices us and only cries out for the essentials. When I catch his eyes, he giggles.

The woman sitting next to me on the train holds a small radio to her ear. I hear the announcer droning on and on. Light through the windows at Grand Central Station, we...

Finding the right videographer is crucial: should anything go wrong, you won’t be able to replay your wedding. There is nothing ceremonious. You are holding an umbrella over me. A good professional videographer, unlike a relative or other amateur, will be prepared for the unexpected, have the proper equipment, and have the skills to add artistic touches to the ceremony. A “no spitting” sign hangs above the front door of City Hall. One of the witnesses, Debra, turns on the radio to listen to the weather reports.

Look under “Video Production Services” or “Wedding Supplies & Services.” You were smiling down...

The EC2001 Panther is a fiber-optic system that transmits information over SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork), video, voice, and low-speed data. I wander around and around the gray, carpeted halls. No one smiles. I must be an invisible signal speeding through a conduit.

It has a flexible design, a variety of applications, compact size, software control of customer premise equipment (CPE), and carries all communications on one system. He never gets my voice-mail about leaving work early because my husband is in the hospital. No one tells him where I am.

Interactions using Panther include teleconferencing, videoconferencing, security surveillance, and transmission...

My mother was an amateur painter. Eventually four siblings were born. I worked in my father’s office, and I was pulled out of the girls’ high school to care for this child from the time she was three days old until she was six. Hair swept softly off the face is the perfect complement to this season’s decidedly romantic turn-of-the-century dresses. The night scene in the woods.

Sketch for Memorial to an Important Lace Shirt.

I studied glass design. I did Red Cross work. He leaves purple bruises blooming on my arms. I packed up and went to Italy. Much...

My sister warns me not to pick the strawberries until they are ripe enough. I return to the hedge near my grandfather’s cottage. I watch daily as they grow, reddening, a heavy sweetness I breathe in. I finger the brittle leaves and seeded skin, but snails eat them all first.

I learn to wait for what I want, and if it fades before it is mine, I am better off never having what I want in God’s eyes. Fairytales, nursery rhymes, my nun-sister teach me this lesson, too. My brother, Dante Gabriel, takes what he wants without punishment. I fear...

I speak as Pamphilia to Amphilanthus code-talking my heart burning. Only women had to be constant in love, but Pamphilia tells her lover constancy is an honor for men.His heat to me is cold. She saves him from becoming trapped in a labyrinth and sacrificed to the Minotaur. He wonders what he owes her, now.

My father goes away to the Netherlands, another world, below, and to court. I live with my aunt who is my godmotherfrom that fire get heat to write. She teaches me prosody and lets me loose among the maze of her library.

I...