ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 19

FOLLOW AS A CONSEQUENCE
the migrators...


HIS EYES
Grant shades his eyes. He can see what could happen. He knows...


AT THE SOUTH UNION CEMETERY
my shadow entangled with the other shadows...


GINSENG
a pair of golden hands...


MY PRIZES MY AWARDS MY HONORS
that reading those decades ago...


IF I HAD TO
if I had to walk...


AFTER THE SUN HAS GONE DOWN
three bright things:...


DONE
the hand strokes...


10/14/11
a fire burns fiercely...


WHAT OTHERS THINK
no longer matters...


WHOLE LIFE
day of cold rain then late afternoon...


COMMUNICATION
I pray to God as if...


CHANGES
I had hoped to be different...


OUT FROM TO
out of love of self of family of books...


3x5 SNAPSHOT
Five Buzzards on the lawn, all related to me. The black clothing...


untitled
lax...


AFTERPARTY
moon just down...


THIRST
it must be one of the spells cast on us...


12/10/11
sky and pavement both clear...


12/15/11
rain all night storming on the roof...


TO PASS THE TIME
I thought of pretending it was 35 years ago but I couldn't...


A SIDE TRIP
road but a few ride on...


THEORY OF NOTHING
afternoon...


WHILE WAITING FOR THE TEST RESULTS
you can play solitaire...


OLD WOOD
branch to branch...


TO DUST
dust I will leave you alone again...


LOCAL HISTORY
walking to the monroe county public library...


ECHO
if when following an echo...


CARRY WHAT
every extinction respects...


SHAMASH
was a name we gave to the sun...


A FIELD OF BOXES
its owner the one who lives far away...


OLD DUST ON OLD BOOKS
there really was only ever the one way home...


THE LONG STRETCH
out of those southern marshes and shores...


OLD AND NEW
I complain of my own clumsiness...


TENDER
when the fire sinks low a little stirring helps...


OBSERVATIONAL
the starvation of our time looks like...


WHAT IT IS LIKE NOW
mid-writing mid-word the one...


FEELINGS AND FACTS
The footprint left in clay today--...


AMONGST US
paper burns...


JUST ANOTHER GRAVE
distinguished as they all are...


REPORT TO MYSELF
the fevers nightly for a week...


A BOOK OF CLASSIC ERRORS
if your name is not listed...


COSMIC
the worldless water...


THIS SHINING
this life so rich with coincidence...


THE COOLDOWN
everything piled into the drought has been wiped away...


MY BED
my grandma's blind stroking of the table...


7/29/12
this summer is tougher than its trees...


untitled
there was a man walking with his bag on his back...


NIGHT SKY
in a number that makes naming unmanageable...


WHAT DO I KNOW?
years past and far away behind me...


untitled
his own language...


LESSON
the young deer in my yard...


POEM ENDING WITH WHAT I JUST ATE
record the seasons...


untitled
that boulder shrugging up...


STEPPING OUTDOORS AFTER WAKING
looking at the almost light...


10/10/12
a record of what happened...


ALMOST A YEAR SINCE MY MOTHER DIED
some restless leaves fill the air...


NEWS
new light new air the chatter...


11/1/12
this early now momentous and young...

REMINDER


Last summer I looked for the bridge whose enormous piers cast the
swirl of water in the river where Hobie Johnson drowned. Found a
road that dead-ended between the railroad and the river, a track
wandering through the brush to the muddy bank, a rope hanging over
the water. But the bridge was gone, piers down, and next day over
the river I saw that even the hole in the mountainside that the
bridge led to was sealed up. The guy who owned a pizza place near
where the whole mighty thing and its traffic of trains had once
existed had saved newspaper articles and pictures of it being built
and later being made to go away. In this part of the world, every-
thing vanishes without a trace, and then the without-a-trace is
forgotten. Plug a hole, let the frail paper yellow, words blur,
the whole thing gradually crumbles. True pain and scandal once
safely in the past, we can establish some kind of tourist zone
nearby. Put the graveyard on the hill so the dead get the best
view of the whole thing, while mourners are too distracted by grief
to notice. Maybe some piece of Hobie broke off, changed form,
drifted down the river system--Ohio in its giant crease between
states, juncture with the Mississippi, Mississippi down to the
sea--experiencing the whole phenomenon of half a continent empty-
ing itself of rain, dirt, trash, the question of origins forgotten,
that piece of Hobie lost forever in the Gulf.