MONDAY the call to remind me how ancestors said their counties backward travelled heroic distances then refused to part from the strangers they found their discovery of names to leave after them like tossing fish back to the lake the speaker I will not attend to the voices whose rhythms I choose to understand my concern for what cannot be said and what is still possible to forgive-- my life leads my chancing hands to do their mysterious writing and I am untroubled by how much I still have to gather up how far I still don't travel by words how many I still must care for out of my own pockets (though they seem empty and I feel dull like a bottle squeezed to its last drops)
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