My father's life -- On writing -- Fires -- John Gardner : the writer as teacher -- poems: one: Drinking while driving -- Luck -- Distress sale -- Your dog dies -- Photograph of my father in his twenty-second year -- Hamid Ramouz (1818-1906) -- Bankruptcy -- The baker -- Iowa summer -- Alcohol -- For Semra, with martial vigor -- Looking for work -- Cheers -- Rogue River jet-boat trip, Gold Beach, Oregon -- July 4, 1977 -- two: You don't know what love is -- three: Morning, thinking of empire -- The blue stones -- Tel Aviv and Life on the Mississippi -- The news carried to Macedonia -- The mosque in Jaffa -- Not far from here -- Sudden rain -- Balzac -- Country matters -- This room -- Rhodes -- Spring, 480 B.C. -- four: Near Klamath -- Autumn -- Winter insomnia -- Prosser -- At night the salmon move -- With a telescope rod on Cowiche Creek -- Poem for Dr. Pratt, a lady pathologist -- Marriage -- The other life -- The mailman as cancer patient.