ACCOUNT OF MY DAYS

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  keyword(s) in poems:

Sequence: 4

ABOUT TO SIT DOWN
Stepping out the back door...


KISS HIS EAR
Brown corn bends as...


STALLING OUT
Just by getting enough distance...


PAGE ZERO
my mind's blank wall...


PARTING
words just off...


CRICKETS HESITATE
the night...


FROM AND TO
my first eternity...


IN THIS LITTLE POEM OR WORLD
I mislaid my travel plans the map...


FIELD GUIDE
indigo bunting no words...


untitled
I knew...


I STAY UP LATE
studying to live...


POEM OF EXPOSURE
the tender outcry...


untitled
underground I'll turn to you...


THEFT OF A LINE FROM TATE
I consider it a citizen's duty...


STANDING STILL IN
november...


HOW I TRAPPED THE MURDERER
I left out the part...


PROVERB
he who sleeps a false sleep...


A SUNDAY NIGHT SERMON FOR DAVID BAKER
The first step is to listen,...


I AM PART BUZZARD
my grandmother was a buzzard...


DEAR FUCKHEADS
my head hurts...


TILL IT THAWS
1....


RESOLUTION
I am so glad...


EVENING POEM
in the cellar...


DISTURBANCE
the world is alive...


FLIGHT
the gamblers...


VISIT
Buying toys, the one remaining copy...


STORM
in trouble again...


JUST AFTER DAWN
We sat among the cattle and he asked me ...


INTERPRETATION
Hour begets hour, dream begets dream,...


THE BUZZARD SPEAKS
I am proud...


INTERRUPTION
not knowing what to say...


JOSEPH'S POEM
if you wish to own a fear...


DIS-ORDER
of course...


BLUE MILLION
in the house dark...


untitled
blank pages spit their silence...


BROKEN POEM
life goes through...


AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOL. II
the day before my birth...


MARENGO
the pressure of seasons...


TODAY
awoke in the forest...

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