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: 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...

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.