I

Preludes    •  13

II

Portrait of a Grandmother, 1949    •  21
What My Parents Gave Me    •  22
An Anabaptist Learns Tai Chi    •  23
You Wanted This World    •  26
Can You Remember the Smell of Alfalfa on Your Hands?    •  27
Talking Poetry with an Amish Bishop    •  28
Sermon 1: No Stoplight in This Tourist Town    •  30
             2: The World from Up Here    •  32
             3: And Yet, And Yet    •  34
Saving the Springhouse    •  36
Poem Written Four Hours from Home    •  37
When Red Rushes Up    •  39
“He Steps into the Sky”    •  41
Earth-Smelling Secrets    •  43
A Confessional Carry-In    •  45
Reading Plath at a National Mennonite Convention    •  47

III

A Father’s Calling    •  51
Old Order    •  52
Psalm to a Simple Supper    •  54
Will There Be Pianos in Africa?    •  56
What Should I Wear for the Journey?    •  57
My Mother as Minister/ of Music    •  58
Ascension    •  60
Liberian Man, Survivor    •  62
Uprising    •  64
Ava, German for “Bird”    •  66
My Father Eats McDonalds    •  67
Girl on Somalia Drive    •  68
A Hundred Ways to Kill a Rooster    •  70
Our Own Kind of Advent    •  72
Reverence    •  74

IV

Method    •  77
No Anchoress    •  79
Mozart Hands    •  81
Liftable Garden    •  83
The Piano in Barrancabarmeja    •  84
Blood Tonic    •  86
The Apple Speaks    •  88
New Marriage, a Barn Raising    •  90

Notes and Dedications     92
Acknowledgments     93
The Author     94