Grand Tour The kitchen was the room where they were most themselves, and they were there now, standing at the counter. She spooned sugar into her coffee and stirred it, watching his face as she did so. She smiled at the creased expression of concentration as he pressed the toaster handle down, the two pieces of bread disappearing into the machine. The toast popped up and she clapped and he carefully extracted the slices and buttered them with oleo from the tub,   and he cut them diagonally the way she liked her toast. She held onto his arm as they walked to the kitchen, and they sat together in…

Holy Innocents There were several of us in the airy house, one or two to a cage and tended well by the withered man and his quiet wife. We thrilled to the gentle care they gave us, and we had forgotten that we had ever flown free in the open sky with its wonders and its hazards. We sang out our gratitude, and we loved to speak to the lined faces that peered up   at us when they spilled food and sweet water into our cups or changed the paper on our floors. We hung in our small homes in the ivory-colored light that sifted in through the paper…

Never Be Understood This morning I stood at our fence, flanked by frisky dogs and listening to the crow-calls and the lowing black cattle, feeling God’s good breath in my thinning hair, and I loved every caress of the living world around me. And I thought back to a sultry East Texas afternoon when my wife and I visited a state park, trying to glean a few hours of respite from our suburban rushings. We had barely settled onto the concrete picnic table and unloaded our feast when a car pulled into the spot adjacent ours. The doors flapped open and the occupants spilled out onto the woodchips that served…