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: 11

BEING AND NON-BEING
vastness goes...


FIREFLY NIGHTS
firefly nights and bloom...


SUMMER ENDING SOUNDS
cicada on a willow branch...


YOUR FACE IS HERE
I carry it in both hands...


COMPASS
to point the direction of time's arrow...


WHAT I HEARD
the same sound in the rain coming through the trees...


THE WORKS IN NEWARK AND FORT ANCIENT
the circle I stand in...


BECK'S MILL
stands of corn fields of grass and tall flowers...


THE DROUGHT OF 2002
remember rain...


WAITING FOR COOLER
over all the river lands...


untitled
through misfortune...


STONE QUARRIES
there was never...


CONVERSATION WITH FATE
fate can be found in all directions...


NEWS
here here here here here...


PARALLELS
what goes on at the same time...


OUT OF SLEEP
often when I wake before daylight...


TIME RELIGION
worshipped by ticks prayed to...


THIS AFTERNOON
I walked over the cemetary...


LATE IN SEPTEMBER
the bigger sky...


WHERE I COME FROM
farmers turning in their fields...


TWO BY TWO
in the iron-barred well of a basement window...


IN US
the day of your night is walking...


9/30/02
a crow like me squawks from some way off...


MY METHOD
my method...


TO THE FALLEN/IN PRAISE OF FALLING/THEFT OF LINES FROM TAYLOR
color of flame...


WEATHER
The door holds. Yesterday's violent red morning, today's steady...


CAUSE/EFFECT
because of mirrors I have a face...


PERSONAL REVELATIONS OF 2003
I am in my middle errors waiting in line to migrate...


THE ROADSIDE MARTYRS
there are no coffins under the crosses they only mark...


I LISTEN
even when no one is talking...


2/4/03
this morning the sky was a sea of clouds...


ENTRY FOR A CHRONICLE
In this year, people's talk was often of peace and war....


WIND REMEMBER
the wind blowing the winter I was 11 is still blowing...


HOLD ON
this is not...


MINUS WHATEVER MINUS
sky minus blue earth minus brown...


COMING ACROSS DEER TRACKS IN THE SNOW
my feet step where yours did...


MIRROR MYSELF
being invisible to myself...


SOMEONE AND ME
someone complained about my attitude...


3/22/03
dark the pillow from which dawn lifts its head...


OUR COURTHOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL
from the southwest corner on a clear April day...


LUCKY FOR NOW
I slept but all night in the constant rain...


APOLOGIZE BUT
I should apologize to the county...


VISITING T.C. STEELE'S HOUSE IN THE RAIN
the trees have had time...


METAPHOR
one thing is like another...


ITINERARY
I crossed the Wabash River...


ER
by which I mean Eric Rensberger...


7/20/03
no one to see...


READY I THOUGHT
I am ready I thought...


untitled
subtle...


CHILLY WITH
the window open...


THUNDER DAY
everything loses strength in the heat...


REMINDER
Last summer I looked for the bridge whose enormous piers cast the...


COUNTING UP TO 53
and counting again...


SUMMER NIGHT
day goes down...


JUST BEFORE BED
above the heart a sentence beats...


STORM DAMAGE
trees shattered...


MY HOUSE, A POEM
You are listening when I say that the great thing about a poem...


MARS GETS CLOSER
and catches us looking at him...


A GLIMPSE
for weeks we looked at the sky...

THE TASK


There is a god or goddess for first light and last light, for each
star, each motion of stars, and even for stars not visible. A deity
for remembering and for forgetting, for fire and for water. Farm
animals and wild animals, houses, mountains, storms, and hours have
each his own divinity. And at birth there comes to the birthing room
an individual and obscure god, just for that one child. At death,
the god of decomposition.

We must overthrow them all, each must be proved not to exist, the
evidence questioned until it gives out. And this must be done sud-
denly, not over a period of time, with energy and conviction. The
thousand, the ten thousand, the more-than-countable must be overthrown
and the new explanation given: whether of the one true God, or of
science, or of a trick of language. And see, already, how they begin
to multiply again, and we argue over which has the primacy, thus dis-
tracted from and forgetting our main task: the overthrow, the ar-
guing into dust, the ceaseless and sorrowful effort we give to erasing
the gods we have named.