ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  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...

OUR COURTHOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL


from the southwest corner on a clear April day
the stone steps rising between two old redbuds
their heads bushy with flowers and behind and above them
the blocky white courthouse itself backed by blue sky
the lawn is green daffodils surge the larger trees bud out
the monument to all the soldiers and wars is solid
even if some of the lettering is dissolving and the words go

but my favorite monument is on this side screened by shrubs
a tall square pillar with dried up faucets at its base
"drink and be grateful" "thirsty and ye gave me drink"
put up by the WCTU many decades ago in pure idealism
and desire for new laws--did it have a statue on top?
I can look this up--because we are a people of ideals and laws

we will break our heads or others' on history if it won't
give way to our banging we have sought a prosperity
to end all prosperity and it never ends the empire
of winners and losers the frontier of it is moving outward
leaving us behind searching the strip malls
for a measure of our limitations

how harsh to love a place that seeks ideal laws
and is always moving away from you
I think it is in a desert now building fires
and spreading ideals our heads have forgotten so sore
from the banging but that's OK I can spin in circles
till I stumble like a drunk in front of the WCTU monument
I can watch the republic dissolve in the distance
into empire and be thankful I'm still here
and lost and ready to fall like a city of millions but really
I'm just a dizzy smalltown provincial who loves April
and stone steps and thinks our courthouse is beautiful


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