ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS
Sequence: 3
MONDAY
the call to remind me
how ancestors said their counties backward
travelled heroic distances
then refused to part from the strangers they found
their discovery of names to leave after them
like tossing fish back to the lake
the speaker I will not attend to
the voices whose rhythms I choose to understand
my concern for what cannot be said
and what is still possible to forgive--
my life leads my chancing hands
to do their mysterious writing
and I am untroubled by how much
I still have to gather up how far
I still don't travel by words how many
I still must care for out of my own pockets
(though they seem empty and I feel dull
like a bottle squeezed to its last drops)