ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

sequence #
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6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 16

SPRING WET
so much rain...


WHAT WE FOUND
as held in a mouth...


READ RELAX WRITE
bees stumble out...


AGREEMENT
The cabdriver walking home from his ...


CALLING CROW
his wings keep moving...


untitled
the wood door held open in my hand...


REAL APRIL
what we call reality is a...


GARDENING NOTES
the opening where...


THE POEM
I was thinking standing at the top of the hill...


THREE RELATED POEMS
the moon's "clear fields"...


untitled
let me know what it's like...


HERE FILL THIS PART OUT
and I'll fill in the rest...


7/30/08
mud my friend from youth...


LIVING THINGS GIVE BACK WHAT THEY GATHER
grassy field seen through the tree stems...


LISTENING TO THE STORM
water...


THE WAY
feet on the way that flutters before us...


THE SAME
the earth has borrowed everything...


8/10/08
the worrying approaches of a hurricane or a birthday...


8/20/08
the marks on us...


THANKS TO THE MAKERS OF CUNEIFORM
the damp clay you marked...


FIRE
when and if the sparks...


USEFUL
the tremor is useful for mixing things...


A SINGLE CLOUD IN A DRY SEASON
the cloud passing east at sunset...


EARLY HOUR READING
the cicadas have been singing all night...


"ABOVE US ONLY SKY"
at night the activity...


ACCEPTS
summer comes to rest...


untitled
the rush of air overhead as I sleep...


MOONLIGHT
light streaming in every window...


ALLEGORICAL SCENE
the translators...


ME WALKING IN NATURE
Looking in all directions, no one to be seen: I am alone. Here ...


ME AND IT
I decide to set it aside for a few days...


TRILLION
bewilderment in the trillions...


10/10/08
no pride no complaints...


10/10/08, ALSO
three quarter moon...


WRITING WITH THE COLD HAND
a couple of pages back:...


HOW I'M THINKING NOW
half the day spent avoiding...


COMPARING
the way the trembling travels through me...


2/26/09
I don't have to try hard to act as though...


THESE POEMS
a poem for any day of the year ...


DESIRE
The circumference of the earth now widened enormously, a new...


I WATCH
a fire of dead branches...


ALL OF OUR LIFE IS TO REPEAT
all of our life is to repeat...


I INVESTIGATE
having touched many things...


I WAKE BEFORE DAWN
again...


SOMEONE WHISPERS IN THE EMPEROR'S EAR
and he knows what to say next...


TO AN ANT DROWNED IN HONEY
how gold...


THE LOWER AND THE HIGHER
when the lower lifts ...


EPISODE FROM A NARRATIVE
their morning...


WHAT HAS BEEN DONE
every stroke went through my hand first...


TRAVELS WITH
all of you take me with you...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM MERWIN
that hand moving a touch towards me...


WAS I
I had been beautiful once...


FAIR TRADE
the creek crossing under the road...


SAYINGS
all these roads bent here as if finding their reason lose it...


PARALLEL LIVES
oh ye of little wings...


SUMMARY TO THIS POINT
age a point...


MUSICIAN
the voice he has...

OUR COURTHOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL


from the southwest corner on a clear April day
the stone steps rising between two old redbuds
their heads bushy with flowers and behind and above them
the blocky white courthouse itself backed by blue sky
the lawn is green daffodils surge the larger trees bud out
the monument to all the soldiers and wars is solid
even if some of the lettering is dissolving and the words go

but my favorite monument is on this side screened by shrubs
a tall square pillar with dried up faucets at its base
"drink and be grateful" "thirsty and ye gave me drink"
put up by the WCTU many decades ago in pure idealism
and desire for new laws--did it have a statue on top?
I can look this up--because we are a people of ideals and laws

we will break our heads or others' on history if it won't
give way to our banging we have sought a prosperity
to end all prosperity and it never ends the empire
of winners and losers the frontier of it is moving outward
leaving us behind searching the strip malls
for a measure of our limitations

how harsh to love a place that seeks ideal laws
and is always moving away from you
I think it is in a desert now building fires
and spreading ideals our heads have forgotten so sore
from the banging but that's OK I can spin in circles
till I stumble like a drunk in front of the WCTU monument
I can watch the republic dissolve in the distance
into empire and be thankful I'm still here
and lost and ready to fall like a city of millions but really
I'm just a dizzy smalltown provincial who loves April
and stone steps and thinks our courthouse is beautiful