ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 12

untitled
it's as the world is...


SONG
in the beak of one bird...


I STAND
before the tree...


PLUS A DAY
the eastern light...


ME STANDING STILL
by my feet infant trees...


10/8/03
trunk in the forest lit...


APPLE AND NEARFULL MOON
first bite of an apple...


SUNSET AUTUMN
the brilliant west...


UNEXPECTED LOVE
the cranes hovering...


STILL POOL
inked by falling leaves...


10/23/03
moody cemetery...


ACROSS IN
air...


IN MY NEW BLACK JACKET
beanfields shake their rattles...


OUR TRIP
it is like...


ALAN AFTER HE LEFT
missed out on certain sundays...


5:55
moon gone...


SOMETIME IN THE SEASON
a shower blowing headlines past...


THE HILL WAS BRIGHT GREEN
the crow was darker...


FOLLOWING
the road coming out of my mouth...


NEW SORROWS EVERY DAY
the birds flying through my head...


REAL REMEMBRANCE
the wind as the weather changes...


MY POEMS
I said and then paused...


12/1/03
branches bare their birds to the wind...


LONG FULL
the evening land...


AROUND
the way the world looked to him...


ON THE WORLD
this world is one...


FROM THIS BLUFF
trees having shed their leaves...


WOODS: ZONE
where loneliness finds itself...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM WRIGHT
when the sea comes back...


WILDNESS COMES BACK
The wild in America is contained, pushed back, owned by the people...


3/1/04
the road is quiet...


AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOL. III
in the desert of eternity...


FOR ONCE
setting a course...


YELLOW BIRCH RAVINE, HEMLOCK CLIFFS
go an hour south...


PRESERVED
how a house becomes a ruin...


INSTANT PRACTICE
I have failed...


TEACHER
breath of breaths...


UNTIL
this dream we are living...


OF THE NINETEEN THOUSAND
of the nineteen thousand days of my life so far...


UNDISTURBED
The night after the poetry reading I slept well but towards morning...


SHORT SPRING SHOPPING LIST
forsythia...


WAZOO,
out the:...


7/20/04
the dead wood's fruit...


ELEGY
told me two weeks before he died...


MY CAREER I
near the cascades leaping recklessly...


MY CAREER II
standing on the vast roof that evening...


UNAFFLICTED
summer somnia...


WHAT I NOTICED AND WHAT I THOUGHT
trees shook by wind...


PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE
so happy with me...


WHILE THE MASS EXTINCTIONS
went on there were...


LEFT
to have waited...


LESSON
the heart tilted over...


MODERN SINKHOLES
near the house...


EVERYWHERE
this time of year...


WEEKEND SCENE
walking in circles forwards...


LAST DAY OF SUMMER
a tree lighter by a leaf...


DRY
the natives mow their lawns...


FIRST LIGHT
the other great example...


THE BOLD AND THE PALE
the morning glories have surged up the trellises...


I'M HAPPY
when I say I'm happy...

Listen!


HERE BEGINS THE POEM OF MY LEFT HAND


My left hand is a child
moving clumsily and eagerly,
shy in company.  He lets his older brother
do the clasping and pointing,
all the most dramatic gestures.
Everything is a joke to him
because he knows he is despised
for being left, but all admit
that what is left is the best part.

My left hand is always excited
yet he claims to know nothing,
is rather silent when I question him.

He is growing so much more slowly
than the rest of me--that is why
he is not yet skilled, bold, and learned.
For every ten years of mine he matures one,
and I think when I die and am buried
my left hand will be alive still,
just coming into the strength of youth.
I love to think of him in the ground,
bold amongst the stones and clay,
his time of adventure come at last,

his music a man's music,
studying the worm's mouth without desolation
now that he has entered a time with no sun:
too deep to freeze, too cool to sweat.
He is never alone, he is in the great
multitude of life that has been waiting for him.
He has grown wiser than me through coming to know
the beat of the world in the center of his body.

From his house of clay he can watch
the stars and the stretch of space
beyond the farthest star.  He has graceful
years before he grows old, and even that
will be a blessing like a silk glove,
for as he softens the stones draw close
and cradle him and call him
their little old boy, so weak and in need
of voices to teach him how to die and become
a new mineral, moistened with forever.