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This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.
This book is for MLPS, my love and light.
I will sing for my beloved my love-song about his vineyard...
Isaiah 5:1
Contents
Chapel on the Way to Hobo Town
The Man in the Country of His Dream
Bridge on Unnamed Branch of Big Goose Creek
A Field of Tiger Lilies in Kentucky
Culture
Coming down through the Woods after a Rain
Something to Say about Possums
The Geography of Yonder
Funeral, Country Church, beside a Stream in Old Kentucky
Theology
Symbolism
Going Back to Bimble
Evangelism
Birds Arriving in Dim Light
Justice
Provincial Thought
An Apparition
Patch of Light in Deep Woods
Southern City Poem, Early ’70s
Amid the Flood of Mortal Ills Prevailing
Obedience
The Mark on the Wall
The Woodcock
The Gods
Old-Time Kentucky Salt-Kettle Dream
A Dream with Old Men inside It
Grammar
Hill Philosophy
Winter Work
Another River Still
A Portion of the Cosmos in Kentucky
The Wash
Fog over Beech Fork Valley
Sunday School
The Beginning
Slow Class, Sixth Grade
The Foster Boy
Stream at Night
Cathedral up on Posey Ridge
The Watching Tree
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Maurice Manning
Copyright
Special thanks
THE PINCH
Here in Kentucky, a world and, yet,
a second, unknowable world are drawn
almost together between God’s thumb
and famous, animating finger.
It’s a tight
