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: 13

HAVING FOLLOWED MY HEART TILL ITS
give me...


EXPLANATION
gravity's open mouth...


THE RAIN
if it was going to happen...


TWO MEN
the man bending over sweeping dust...


10/1/04
a silence has come into the cornfields...


CERTAINTY
what lies beneath gravity...


untitled
it takes courage...


ITS USE
I turn and pick up...


WHEN WE LIVE
the world drops...


HANDS
I look in my hands...


10/26/04
while the fields are browning...


AFTER THE GREEN HAS GONE
rain through the trees...


HARVESTS AND STONE
surrounded by harvests...


FROM MY DIARY
early long lines...


FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER
the sky crowded with gray...


POEM WITH QUESTION MARKS
turn around at the warning sign?...


IN THE GREAT BEWILDERMENT
just as in a set of words...


11/14/04
moth so small it nearly escapes notice...


CODA
moth so small it nearly escapes notice...


STARTLED
I hadn't gone three steps before the mocking began. The bell...


LOOKING BACK
we die of everything...


TOWARDS SOLSTICE
this long night no dark...


POINTS IN THE VAST
in this dark you see...


TO DEAD PLANETS
this cold house...


MY SNOW JOURNEY
just keep walking...


LATE WINTER
my stiff legs on these winter stairs...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM STEVENS
looking up at the cloud covered sky...


HOMELAND
our inland waters slide...


SECURITY
on the way to...


2/18/05
seen from the shadow side...


CERTAIN ONES HAVE SHOWN
their heads through the dirt...


SOME EVENTS
some flakes on the way down stopped by...


untitled
what...


COLD BLUE
of the jay's back...


SIGHT
between one minute before...


untitled
that look he had...


DOWNSLOPE
the years grown...


EQUIVALENCE
in a mirror...


LOOKED UP
the dark wing...


CROWS
the call wordless...


3/29/05
the day made dimmer...


ITS FIELDS
green wing of the hill...


TO HOME
the country you came from...


THE GREAT COLLECTION
seen in weak light riding...


IT'S SENTIMENTAL BUT TRUE, I LOVE THE SPRING
branches...


THOUGH I STARTED TO SAY THEIR
I should have said...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM BLY
cold morning but he hardly noticed...


4/20/05
white hands of the dogwood...


IF GOD IS LOVE
and love is a consuming force...


ONCE AND AGAIN
the statues are not statues...


THERE
in that place...


7/4/05
the sun behind my back lights...


AFTER COMPLAINING FOR DAYS OF THE HEAT
rain and cooler weather...


IT'S TOO HOT IN THE HOUSE
I'll sweat in the shade outside...


HISTORY
once we could hear each other...


JULY
the green trees...


untitled
after rising...

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