Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place—who knows?

A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant.

miscellany

I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us

Music.

motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.

I do not know

Sometimes it is the other way around.

but through it all, I remain myself

I have paid through my ancestors for it

terrible struggle

weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife

I do not mind at all.

I was now a little colored girl.

Jacksonvill

everybody's Zora.

gallery seat

The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town

I remember the very day that I became colored.

the last word will be theirs. ◊

stand firm and let the peacocks multiply

myself

fall they shed them feathers all over the place anyway and it was a job to clean up

No better than any other chicken,

Either they go, or I go.

he will roar

breakfasted

It is hard to tell the truth about this bird

flowers

Often he wakes and screams, “Help! Help!”

bird who lost his foot in the mowing

Eee-ooo-ii! Eee-­ooo-ii

This is not so.

un­furled map of the universe which floats nearby.

shimmering arch

children stopped in their tracks and stared,

The man swerved the truck back around again

ost a foot in the mowing machine

“Get a load of that bas­tard!”

galaxy of gazing haloed suns

regal

who learn by living

with playboys in the summer

he inspires a range of emotions

For a chicken that grows up to have such exceptional good looks, the pea cock starts life with an inauspicious appearance. The peabiddy is the color of those large objectionable moths that flutter about light bulbs on summer nights. Its only distinguished features are its eyes, a luminous gray, and a brown crest which begins to sprout front the back of its head when it is ten days old. This looks at first like a bug’s. antennae and later like the head feath­ers of an Indian. In six weeks green flecks appear in its neck, and in a few more weeks a cock can be distinguished from a hen by the speckles on his back. The hen’s back gradually fades to an even gray and her appearance becomes shortly what it will always be. I have never thought the peahen unattractive, even though she lacks a long tail and any significant decoration. I have even once or twice thought her more attractive than the cock, more subtle and re­fined; but these moments of boldness pass.

Nine years have passed since my first peafowl arrived.

As soon as the birds were out of the crate, I sat down on it and began to look at them. I have been looking at them even since, from one station or another, and always with the same awe as on that first occasion; though I have always, I feel, been able to keep a bal­anced view and an impartial attitude.

I jumped out of the car and bounded forward.

on a mild day in October

“Don’t those things eat flowers?”

peabiddies

quest

passion, a quest

If I put this information in the beginning of an article on peacocks, it is because I am always being asked why I raise them, and I have no short or reasonable answer.

Shortly after that she died

because it is hard not to

I grabbed a tube of Colgate toothpaste.

teetotaler,

What time is it? Omigod, I have a piano lesson with Miss Jackson and I'm already fifteen minutes late.

Albert Einstein, leonine and sockless, would stop for a while to watch the action. He did not cheer. He never said anything. And before long he would move on. But he seemed interested, seemed to understand what he was looking at, even if we did not.

gastroentomologist

o I remember when I had my first drink? Absolutely.

He helped some of them with their math homework