Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents ix
3. I Constellation after Constellation, Turning on the Spears of Trees
4. January 1
5. For Your Lover on the Eve of Her Thirty-Fifth Birthday 2
6. Brevity 3
7. A Prayer 4
8. Woman Who Taught Her Grandson to Love 5
9. For Kohkum, Reta 6
10. What You Pray 8
11. Listen 9
12. If the World Were Your Home 10
13. Fasting 11
14. Okanagan Lake, November 13
15. The Chair by the Door 14
16. Watching Blackbirds Watching 16
17. The Cactus 17
18. Autumn Elms 18
19. Happiness 19
20. Solace 20
21. Cypress Hills 21
22. Benediction 22
23. Grace 23
24. Miracles 24
25. The Long Walk 25
26. Gnosis 27
27. Conjunctions 29
28. Memory as a Record of Loss 30
29. Octave: Asking Forgiveness 31
30. Surrender 32
31. II The Path Becomes Narrow, Slight as a Note from a Carved Wood Flute
32. When you burn sage, cedar, and braided sweet-grass 35
33. Midnight, Early Spring 37
34. Christmas Eve with Snow 38
35. Doxologies 39
36. The Path Becomes Narrow, Slight as a Note from a Carved Wood Flute 41
37. Spring, Low-Pressure System 43
38. An Ecology of Being and Non-Being 45
39. Insomnia 47
40. Creation Story 49
41. November of Your Fiftieth Year 50
42. III Name, Name, Name, Until You Are Bereft of Words
43. What the Body Remembers 55
44. Under Northern Saskatchewan Pines 56
45. Bearing Stories 57
46. Hollow Man 59
47. Black Bear 61
48. Wear Your Skin Lightly 62
49. Sleep 63
50. Where Language Fails 64
51. In the Great Sand Hills 65
52. Son 66
53. Solitude 67
54. Shooting Star 68
55. Dream 69
56. Winter-Hard 70
57. Birthday Poem 71
58. Woman Hanging 72
59. Religion 73
60. Under Cloud Belly 74
61. Bearing 75
62. Renunciations: February 77
63. Geese 78
64. Beatitudo 79
65. Two Short Meditations 82
66. Nightfall 83
67. Another Season 84
68. Acknowledgements 87