ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  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...

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.