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...

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