“It hangs from heaven to earth.

There are trees in it, cities, rivers,   

small pigs and moons. In one corner

the snow falling over a charging cavalry,   

in another women are planting rice.’’

— From “Tapestry,’’ by Charles Simic, an emeritus professor of literature at the University of New Hampshire and former U.S. poet laureate. He lives on Bow Lake, in Strafford, N.H.