ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 15

LATE SUMMER BEES
a creek of broken stones...


EVERYBODY'S UP BY 6:00 BUT ME
light wind moving overhead...


THE KILL
heap of fawn...


THE AFTER-ETERNITY
the western wind has passed...


WALKING
my steps each one marking...


ADVENTURE
pebble your adventure...


FUTURES PAST
these days a strange dark...


10/10/06
one squirrel less...


A THEORY OF LINES
wind bent by the objects it surrounds...


LAST CRICKET
in the hickory's crown...


AN EQUATION
Our minds are formed for a place where no one is stricken, where...


12/7/06
across the last dark of night...


IT IS
a hundred-year walk to the moon...


BLACKSNAKES
They get to be four, five, six feet long quite commonly. No poison...


TURN OF THE YEAR
near the house a trash...


FORGOTTEN
I remember a world...


LIE BACK
the curved moon lies back...


untitled
a cold rain...


IN ANSWER TO THE REPEATED QUESTION
I spoke my name out loud many times...


HIDDEN BEHIND BELOW
the courthouse square almost empty...


WALKING HERE
my feet said my shoes...


SEVEN DEER
earth in your determined ring...


TO SPEAK OF REAL WEATHER
white hands of water...


SOME WRITING
with gaping wounds...


DREADNIGHT
those few still awake are hidden...


MY CONDITION
the small white moths...


WORLD IN LOVE WITH ITSELF
all motion is one motion...


6/22/07
in the field of shadows...


solitude motionless
my hands stronger...


EVASIVE APOLOGY
I am sorry for all the ones...


PRAYER
...


JUST BETWEEN FRIENDS
a day any day...


untitled
hard verse that will not leave...


8/25/07
the day between two wings...


TO A BUZZARD
cousin...


A MYSTERY
one bird's anxious calling...


STORAGE
blaze of harvest rivered from the fields...


COUNTING MY MONEY
everything is halved...


ASTERS
radiance common heartleaved...


LOVE IS CRAZY, ART IS LONG
there was this one that one...


COME A TIME
endless elegies laid foot to forehead...


MR. RENSBERGER'S EXACT MEASUREMENTS
keep changing...


PERSEPHONE
amongst the dark columns...


WHICH WAY IS BEST?
here steep there boggy moved every which way...


MILK BEER WATER
in the beginning it was milk milk milk...


GONE TO HEAVEN
at how many funerals...


1/28/08
as daylight does the dark...


DAN MCKIBBEN
sunny window bay in the kitchen...


MUSIC TO MY EYES
snowy baroque ...


TO MYSELF
a page bent...


MY OWN TIME
there was it could be imagined...


2/26/08
if I step outside for even a few minutes ...


ONE THOUGHT YIELDS TO ANOTHER
whatever evolution is...


LAST OF WINTER (FIRST TRY)
as the days bend toward...


LAST OF WINTER (SECOND TRY)
a man is a fire in the world...


TRUE NATURE
after the dark is dark...


WHO MADE IT
if I am in my labors...

1937


the Ohio in flood
my parents have not yet met

my father is a young man 
trying to work out a way
to avoid being a farmer
and just beginning to
fail at one alternative after another
he has not yet reached the last one
and failed at it too
which will force him to show
his true excellence

my mother is still in school
and probably already as angrily unsatisfied
as she will be later
probably as funny and beguiling
as greedy of attention
as sharp-tongued and sad
as eager to tell a story
probably already dreaming of mountains and cities

far to the south of them
another Ohio lays on top of the first
together they escape the banks
that have always defined "Ohio River"
and run over the surrounding lands
ruining homes and scraping away crops
killing and exiling many

for ages people have preferred to live by rivers
it offers many advantages
especially as settlements grow larger
they crowd their houses near the water
they send and receive by it
they get their news off it
and from time to time this happens
and they get their sorrow too

what did my mother and father hear about it?
a disaster so far away it couldn't touch them
but close enough there must have been much talk
probably their knowledge of it was slight
and quickly drifted to the back of the mind
life can be hard enough to account for
without worrying about others' heartaches