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...

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