ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 10

FRESH START
the author of many leaves...


I ASK YOU
what I am about to do and what...


untitled
The work defines itself, pulls itself...


LARRY MILLER
when you call back there to order the flowers...


ADDENDUM TO LARRY MILLER
punched him in the stomach once...


MY FORTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY
the balance point between years...


THE DROUGHT
if the drought means anything we haven't been told...


I SPEND
hours alone with my books...


SO FAR AS I CAN
the trees at night stretch out...


ANGEL MOUND
stone spades hammers awls...


untitled
sleep drunk from a glass of sleep...


EAST
East, innocence, enormous, a blush over half the sky. Now that...


WHAT IS FUCKED UP ABOUT THIS
is a question that can be answered...


CAN'T STOP TALKING
sat so still you noticed...


SETTLEMENT
1....


PAUSE ON THE ROAD IN CUMBERLAND GAP TENNESSEE
It was speed, the technology of rapidity, that made the nation pos-...


ON THE STAIRS IN THE DARK
it is late to be starting again...


THREE SLEEPS
a sleep that wanders...


WINTER PRAISES
of abandoned nests...


untitled
what will always be true?...


KEEPING AT IT
I recite the alphabet in the traditional way...


TALKING TO THE STONES
I am living before you dissolve...


NOT LAMENTING
a lament I am forbidden to speak...


A:
I think it's that I always had the feeling that what is really true,...


HAVE COME HERE
even when I'm late...


THE DAY AFTER THE DAY AFTER
a place in the paperwork...


7/25/00
beetles crushed between my fingers...


MY CURRENT MOOD
certain observations have broken their heads...


STILL
making no effort if I can...


GOLDFINCH ON A WIRE
black line in his feet...


SUMMER PRAISES
the ground-filling rain...


LISTENING TO
the music that keeps me up late...


THE STONE BOAT
that sled of thick oak planks...


DISAPPOINTMENT
under the shade of the words I wrote...


AUGUST
the fields with their fine catch...


AT THE ENCORE CAFE
with your roast potatoes...


WANDERING POEM
on the road...


MY VACANCY
the old hours come back...


untitled
I protest...


8/3/01
when I go inside...


ONE MOTION
swifts of the city come and go...


THE YEAR OF MY ABSENCE
a number of stones under my feet...


REFUSAL
I am awake now...


11/26/01
in the dark before dawn the stars...


WINTER GENESIS I
mornings on this stone seat...


WINTER GENESIS II
under cold tree branches stacked stones outline...

WILDNESS COMES BACK


The wild in America is contained, pushed back, owned by the people
as a public treasure for all time. Thus it is separated from us
and our settlements so that America can possess its wildness and be
free from it, well-ordered. But the wildness comes back. In the
abandoned pastures and on the rock ledges made by highway cuts,
cedar saplings appear and then come up in crowds. Along the old
fencerows and in carelessly-tended alleys trash trees--sumac, tree
of heaven--spring out. Scavenger animals multiply, certain birds
find the suburbs and cities to their liking, cracks in the asphalt
or cement breed greenery suppressed elsewhere, the dumps draw
colorful vermin to their feast. And the wildness takes over new
types of habitat, as when the vines cover abandoned shacks and
trailers, and the rodents shelter there. It takes on new forms
that we don't at first recognize as the wild asserting itself:
toxins and meth labs, birth anomalies and addictions, unchecked
wealth confronted by ever-larger desires--these are wild, these
are crawling over and under our safe buildings. We are crazy for
guns, we have an insatiable desire for power, control, security.
The law devours wildly, contempt for losers is a wild passion,
money is the wildest thing of all. We make the largest explosions
the world has ever known because the wildness is in us. We vote
for it, we consume it, it eats away at us, it is the terror our
eyes see everywhere, and we can't stop our hearts beating too fast,
our breath coming out in shouts. We have a wild, violent desire
to get a peace so endless it seems natural to do anything we can
think of to obtain it.