The Country I wondered about you when you told me never to leave a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches lying around the house because the mice might get into them and start a fire. But your face was absolutely straight when you twisted the lid down on the round tin where the matches, you said, are always stowed. Who could sleep that night? Who could whisk away the thought of the one unlikely mouse padding along a cold water pipe behind the floral wallpaper gripping a single wooden match between the needles of his teeth? Who could not see him rounding a corner, the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam, the sudden flare, and the creature for one bright, shining moment suddenly thrust ahead of his time-- now a fire-starter, now a torch-bearer in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid illuminating some ancient night. Who could fail to notice, lit up in the blazing insulation, the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces of his fellow mice, one-time inhabitants of what once was your house in the country? Velocity In the club car that morning I had my notebook open on my lap and my pen uncapped, looking every inch the writer right down to the little writer''s frown on my face, but there was nothing to write about except life and death and the low warning sound of the train whistle. I did not want to write about the scenery that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture, hay rolled up meticulously-- things you see once and will never see again. But I kept my pen moving by drawing over and over again the face of a motorcyclist in profile-- for no reason I can think of-- a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin, leaning forward, helmetless, his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind. I also drew many lines to indicate speed, to show the air becoming visible as it broke over the biker''s face the way it was breaking over the face of the locomotive that was pulling me toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha for me, all the other stops to make before the time would arrive to stop for good. We must always look at things from the point of view of eternity, the college theologians used to insist, from which, I imagine, we would all appear to have speed lines trailing behind us as we rush along the road of the world, as we rush down the long tunnel of time-- the biker, of course, drunk on the wind, but also the man reading by a fire, speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book, and the woman standing on a beach studying the curve of horizon, even the child asleep on a summer night, speed lines flying from the posters of her bed, from the white tips of the pillow cases, and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.

"More Than a Woman" Ever since I woke up today, a song has been playing uncontrollably in my head--a tape looping over the spools of the brain, a rosary in the hands of a frenetic nun, mad fan belt of a tune. It must have escaped from the radio last night on the drive home and tunneled while I slept from my ears to the center of my cortex. It is a song so cloying and vapid I won''t even bother mentioning the title, but on it plays as if I were a turntable covered with dancing children and their spooky pantomimes, as if everything I had ever learned was being slowly replaced by its slinky chords and the puff-balls of its lyrics. It played while I watered the plants and continued when I brought in the mail and fanned out the letters on a table. It repeated itself when I took a walk and watched from a bridge brown leaves floating in the channels of a current. Late in the afternoon it seemed to fade, but I heard it again at the restaurant when I peered in at the lobsters lying on the bottom of an illuminated tank which was filled to the brim with their copious tears. And now at this dark window in the middle of the night I am beginning to think I could be listening to music of the spheres, the sound no one ever hears because it has been playing forever, only the spheres are colored pool balls, and the music is oozing from a jukebox whose lights I can just make out through the clouds. Aimless Love This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor''s window, and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle. This is the best kind of love, I thought, without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone. The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel. No lust, no slam of the door-- the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida. No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor-- just a twinge every now and then for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit. But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow. After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish. I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Absence This morning as low clouds skidded over the spires of the city I found next to a bench in a park an ivory chess piece-- the white knight as it turned out-- and in the pigeon-ruffling wind I wondered where all the others were, lined up somewhere on their red and black squares, many of them feeling uneasy about the salt shaker that was taking his place, and all of them secretly longing for the moment when the white horse would reappear out of nowhere and advance toward the board with his distinctive motion, stepping forward, then sideways before advancing again, the same moves I was making him do over and over in the sunny field of my palm. Royal Aristocrat My old typewriter used to make so much noise I had to put a cushion of newspaper beneath it late at night so as not to wake the whole house. Even if I closed the study door and typed a few words at a time-- the best way to work anyway-- the clatter of keys was still so loud that the gray and yellow bird would wince in its cage. Some nights I could even see the moon frowning down at me through the winter trees. That was twenty years ago, yet as I write this with my soft lead pencil I can still hear that distinctive sound, like small arms fire across a border, one burst after another as my wife turned in her sleep. I was a single monkey trying to type the opening lines of my Hamlet, often doing nothing more than ironing pieces of paper in the platen then wrinkling them into balls to flick into the wicker basket. Still, at least I was making noise, adding to the great secretarial din, that chorus of clacking and bells, thousands of desks receding into the past. And that was more than can be said for the mute rooms of furniture, the speechless cruets of oil and vinegar, and the tall silent hedges surrounding the house.

S.