ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

sequence #
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20

  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 11

BEING AND NON-BEING
vastness goes...


FIREFLY NIGHTS
firefly nights and bloom...


SUMMER ENDING SOUNDS
cicada on a willow branch...


YOUR FACE IS HERE
I carry it in both hands...


COMPASS
to point the direction of time's arrow...


WHAT I HEARD
the same sound in the rain coming through the trees...


THE WORKS IN NEWARK AND FORT ANCIENT
the circle I stand in...


BECK'S MILL
stands of corn fields of grass and tall flowers...


THE DROUGHT OF 2002
remember rain...


WAITING FOR COOLER
over all the river lands...


untitled
through misfortune...


STONE QUARRIES
there was never...


CONVERSATION WITH FATE
fate can be found in all directions...


NEWS
here here here here here...


PARALLELS
what goes on at the same time...


OUT OF SLEEP
often when I wake before daylight...


TIME RELIGION
worshipped by ticks prayed to...


THIS AFTERNOON
I walked over the cemetary...


LATE IN SEPTEMBER
the bigger sky...


WHERE I COME FROM
farmers turning in their fields...


TWO BY TWO
in the iron-barred well of a basement window...


IN US
the day of your night is walking...


9/30/02
a crow like me squawks from some way off...


MY METHOD
my method...


TO THE FALLEN/IN PRAISE OF FALLING/THEFT OF LINES FROM TAYLOR
color of flame...


WEATHER
The door holds. Yesterday's violent red morning, today's steady...


CAUSE/EFFECT
because of mirrors I have a face...


PERSONAL REVELATIONS OF 2003
I am in my middle errors waiting in line to migrate...


THE ROADSIDE MARTYRS
there are no coffins under the crosses they only mark...


I LISTEN
even when no one is talking...


2/4/03
this morning the sky was a sea of clouds...


ENTRY FOR A CHRONICLE
In this year, people's talk was often of peace and war....


WIND REMEMBER
the wind blowing the winter I was 11 is still blowing...


HOLD ON
this is not...


MINUS WHATEVER MINUS
sky minus blue earth minus brown...


COMING ACROSS DEER TRACKS IN THE SNOW
my feet step where yours did...


MIRROR MYSELF
being invisible to myself...


SOMEONE AND ME
someone complained about my attitude...


3/22/03
dark the pillow from which dawn lifts its head...


OUR COURTHOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL
from the southwest corner on a clear April day...


LUCKY FOR NOW
I slept but all night in the constant rain...


APOLOGIZE BUT
I should apologize to the county...


VISITING T.C. STEELE'S HOUSE IN THE RAIN
the trees have had time...


METAPHOR
one thing is like another...


ITINERARY
I crossed the Wabash River...


ER
by which I mean Eric Rensberger...


7/20/03
no one to see...


READY I THOUGHT
I am ready I thought...


untitled
subtle...


CHILLY WITH
the window open...


THUNDER DAY
everything loses strength in the heat...


REMINDER
Last summer I looked for the bridge whose enormous piers cast the...


COUNTING UP TO 53
and counting again...


SUMMER NIGHT
day goes down...


JUST BEFORE BED
above the heart a sentence beats...


STORM DAMAGE
trees shattered...


MY HOUSE, A POEM
You are listening when I say that the great thing about a poem...


MARS GETS CLOSER
and catches us looking at him...


A GLIMPSE
for weeks we looked at the sky...

NOSTALGIA 


the rain is an empty city 
each drop a building evacuated 
its stairways uninhabitted by echoes its doors and windows 
useless for keeping anything out or in 

each as it falls standing in relation to other drops nearby 
each one composed as if it were thought of only by itself 
or perhaps designed with just its near neighbors in mind 
but the many drops crowded together form a gigantic pattern 
as though this pattern as a whole was foreseen and enacted 
but each drop knows only those near it 
and nothing lives in any of them 

the rooms are empty the roofs are empty the streets and squares 
hold no one and there is no one in a hurry or with time on his 
     hands 
there are no glances no quiet agreements to slip away together 
no first disturbing signs of an illness no firm deals made 
no great bargains or agreements to buy later 
no betrayals or bitter arguments between old friends 
no one is there to love or to lean against when one is tired of 
     all the activity of the day 

in fact one is not there oneself one has been emptied as the city 
     has been emptied 
as if one had never existed as if no as if that included the 
     hypothetical possibility of one's imagined existence or 
     extinction had ever been uttered 
as if the one certainty left is a zero in place of an I 

and in such a city whose citizens have reached such a peak of 
     non-existence 
the streets broaden a little new buildings are not constructed 
     old ones fall 
through the wider spaces between what still stands a fresh wind 
     is blowing 
it parts the buildings or we should be honest the raindrops further 

the sun comes down these channels like an ancient triumph 
the onlookers crowd closer to see the chained slaves and elephants 
the sun is filling all the space now 
one can only feel nostalgia for the stark uninhabitation one has 
     lost 

standing there thinking of it crowded by the sun and all those 
who go by never having even heard of the empty city