ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 15

LATE SUMMER BEES
a creek of broken stones...


EVERYBODY'S UP BY 6:00 BUT ME
light wind moving overhead...


THE KILL
heap of fawn...


THE AFTER-ETERNITY
the western wind has passed...


WALKING
my steps each one marking...


ADVENTURE
pebble your adventure...


FUTURES PAST
these days a strange dark...


10/10/06
one squirrel less...


A THEORY OF LINES
wind bent by the objects it surrounds...


LAST CRICKET
in the hickory's crown...


AN EQUATION
Our minds are formed for a place where no one is stricken, where...


12/7/06
across the last dark of night...


IT IS
a hundred-year walk to the moon...


BLACKSNAKES
They get to be four, five, six feet long quite commonly. No poison...


TURN OF THE YEAR
near the house a trash...


FORGOTTEN
I remember a world...


LIE BACK
the curved moon lies back...


untitled
a cold rain...


IN ANSWER TO THE REPEATED QUESTION
I spoke my name out loud many times...


HIDDEN BEHIND BELOW
the courthouse square almost empty...


WALKING HERE
my feet said my shoes...


SEVEN DEER
earth in your determined ring...


TO SPEAK OF REAL WEATHER
white hands of water...


SOME WRITING
with gaping wounds...


DREADNIGHT
those few still awake are hidden...


MY CONDITION
the small white moths...


WORLD IN LOVE WITH ITSELF
all motion is one motion...


6/22/07
in the field of shadows...


solitude motionless
my hands stronger...


EVASIVE APOLOGY
I am sorry for all the ones...


PRAYER
...


JUST BETWEEN FRIENDS
a day any day...


untitled
hard verse that will not leave...


8/25/07
the day between two wings...


TO A BUZZARD
cousin...


A MYSTERY
one bird's anxious calling...


STORAGE
blaze of harvest rivered from the fields...


COUNTING MY MONEY
everything is halved...


ASTERS
radiance common heartleaved...


LOVE IS CRAZY, ART IS LONG
there was this one that one...


COME A TIME
endless elegies laid foot to forehead...


MR. RENSBERGER'S EXACT MEASUREMENTS
keep changing...


PERSEPHONE
amongst the dark columns...


WHICH WAY IS BEST?
here steep there boggy moved every which way...


MILK BEER WATER
in the beginning it was milk milk milk...


GONE TO HEAVEN
at how many funerals...


1/28/08
as daylight does the dark...


DAN MCKIBBEN
sunny window bay in the kitchen...


MUSIC TO MY EYES
snowy baroque ...


TO MYSELF
a page bent...


MY OWN TIME
there was it could be imagined...


2/26/08
if I step outside for even a few minutes ...


ONE THOUGHT YIELDS TO ANOTHER
whatever evolution is...


LAST OF WINTER (FIRST TRY)
as the days bend toward...


LAST OF WINTER (SECOND TRY)
a man is a fire in the world...


TRUE NATURE
after the dark is dark...


WHO MADE IT
if I am in my labors...

Listen!


HERE BEGINS THE POEM OF MY LEFT HAND


My left hand is a child
moving clumsily and eagerly,
shy in company.  He lets his older brother
do the clasping and pointing,
all the most dramatic gestures.
Everything is a joke to him
because he knows he is despised
for being left, but all admit
that what is left is the best part.

My left hand is always excited
yet he claims to know nothing,
is rather silent when I question him.

He is growing so much more slowly
than the rest of me--that is why
he is not yet skilled, bold, and learned.
For every ten years of mine he matures one,
and I think when I die and am buried
my left hand will be alive still,
just coming into the strength of youth.
I love to think of him in the ground,
bold amongst the stones and clay,
his time of adventure come at last,

his music a man's music,
studying the worm's mouth without desolation
now that he has entered a time with no sun:
too deep to freeze, too cool to sweat.
He is never alone, he is in the great
multitude of life that has been waiting for him.
He has grown wiser than me through coming to know
the beat of the world in the center of his body.

From his house of clay he can watch
the stars and the stretch of space
beyond the farthest star.  He has graceful
years before he grows old, and even that
will be a blessing like a silk glove,
for as he softens the stones draw close
and cradle him and call him
their little old boy, so weak and in need
of voices to teach him how to die and become
a new mineral, moistened with forever.