by A. R. Ammons
nature that roots under us, 107
Nature, you know, is not a one-way street: its, 683
Nature’s undoings, 195
Never did get down there to Washington, 812
Never to be the fool, I always play the fool, but, 328
No longer confident of the transfigurations, the, 722
No sooner do I say I don’t do something than I, 714
no use planning for the future if you’re not, 601
no, I carry hods, I’m a sideloader, cement mixer, 606
Nobody fucks anybody, 673
not coarse, hard, 142
Not smart to be out under trees with the wind still this, 308
Not two months off till the shortest day, the, 680
Nothing will ever be the same again, he said, 327
nothing, though, not stone, 144
Now I’m, 41
Oblivion keeps the caterpillar bright, 363
Often I go out year-early, 380
oh, we go to Owego some Sundays for, 524
Old Age, 628
Old fools, you know, can’t tell where they are, 736
Old friendlies, 867
Old men drain and dread and dream and dress, 692
Old men talk to anybody, or nobody, I, 940
On those late March afternoons, 173
Once (there was a time when) I was attracted, 700
once you’ve caught the notion, 112
Once, trunks pitched into or, 396
One can’t, 215
One failure on, 216
One fellow turns all, 216
One gets started, 367
One goes for speech to the hill-line because it doesn’t speak, 854
one good thing about being too late, 572
One not lost finds no way, 363
One person short-cuts across the lawn because, 371
one types to please and appease, to, 535
One whose impulses are, 78
Open and naked under the big snow, 24
Ophthalmic migraine, you say: well, the right, 937
Opposites attracting could easing jar to a standstill, 63
Our neighbors once buried a mule too, 888
Our trees seem leaflesser, 210
Out in the edge of the yard at evening, 784
Outside the window the leaf in a hedge breeze, 783
Over the rise they find significance behind, 362
Peaks and rivers, cold, 173
peeling the bark off a crabapple, 133
Pigeons, thirty-five in a, 195
Plato derives the many from the one and Aristotle, 64
Plenty of the young dropped, 361
Poems are forms of protective coloration by which, 360
Poetry if, 210
Poetry is the word that has no other words, 786
poetry though a big sport helps one bear what love, 1
Poets “say things”: they shape stuff up and, 747
Poorly-made people, 377
Powwows huddles, 793
Praying answers prayer, 195
Pursue a subject, it flares, 360
put, 847
Radiance comes from, 26
rather than the play of the mind as, 103
Real education makes, 795
Reason can’t end, 24
Returning from the thawed creek, 359
rivulets of scattering, 137
Rock frozen and fractured, 307
Roll, 358
Rolled off a side of mountains or, 359
Route 96B has lain over there, 357
Saying blanket obligations, 785
Say something and then, 90
Scaling the tiers of dominance, 62
scientists plunge into matter looking for the, 232
see a penny, pick it up, it’s 2¢ (and, 583
seems like every winter the outside, 473
set on the line between, 136
Shakespeare makes speaking, poetry: how does, 758
she said, it’s hard to have hope, 535
She was already lean when, 28
Ships turn into lows, 91
Short, heavy-set, 675
should I go on, fearful of the phobias, strung, 299
Shrinking back for coherence’s holding, 357
Shy lark! I’ll bet it took a while to get you, 46
Since the, 49
Sit down and be patient, 29
sixty years ago, I used to hear every, 586
slender means as, 894
slice thirty degrees off the summer, 113
Snow holds two, 92
Snow melt and flood, 25
Snow’s our winter brightening, 196
Snowstorms high-traveling, 92
So came to a cross-water, 772
so here I am fist-diddling in the, 568
So I said to the short-order cook (because I, 766
So many people, you know, use their mouths as, 759
so many things sound contradictory because they have to, 2
So nothing holds—, 93
So the plastic conduits for the new, 196
So there we were eating feathered dinosaur, 732
So what if the reality, 174
So! the stem of the flower, 917
Society sent me this invitation to go to, 43
Some are too difficult to win, 784
some branches, the, 101
Some ideas hit, 50
some notes: buy morning shoes in the morning, 670
Some of these old widow women around here are roving, 397, 819
Some people say why, 822
Some spring thunderstorms, blunderingly, 174
Some things, 209
Somebody left a ladder, 209
Sometimes between thaws, blows, and freezes, 356
Sometimes a maple seed, 50
sometimes I get the feeling I’ve never, 552
Sometimes movies produce events to go with what, 754
sometimes old people snap back into life for a, 250
Sometimes the bleakness nears, 791
Sometimes the ridge across, 50
Somewhere out toward the tip of the downswinging, 742
Spot fires rifle the woods, 51
Spot time conceals: wait long enough (for, 867
Spring thaw peels loose, 398
Squalls rounder, 208
Square notch like, 788
Squirrels in the early, 94
stars, too, are often twinkle-eyed, 574
Stillness can’t hold, 354
stones, as if forms of intelligence, 141
stones, names in them, are, 140
straitened narrow, river-wound, 124
Streaks, drifts, mounds, 354
Streams divided (around a boulder-cluster or, 353
Struck head to, 51
Such a long time as the wave idling gathers, 886
Such a, 407
Summer’s coming’s summer’s going, 208
Sundown near, rose-mauve, 850
Surely, choice in life isn’t just a one-sided manufacture of mental boxes, 399
Surfaced, the snail pokes, 176
sweeps of space haunt the slopes, 131
take, in leaveingtaking, the leavings: feed your, 276
Tears for the long-gone times, 197
Teeth are distressing only, 401
Terror when it goes leaves lifelessness’s big hole, 352
Thaws snow-clear the fields, 177
The all-night rain running, 351
The Ammons women (nine of them, my father’s, 753
The baked potato’s, 785
The balloon maker, stalled desire, 811
The beachscene’s gulls, 823
The biosphere waterbased, 177
The blackberries that ripened, 400
The boundaries, fought clear, are abandoned, 208
The branch sags low, 94
The brook gives me, 9
The brook has worked, 10
The brook is snowed over met, 80
6
The brook, older, 351
The brook, running dry, will stop running, dry, 376
The brook’s slab-gray dry except, 375
The campus oakgrove is, 207
the chisel, chipping in, 136
the clumps and small reservoirs of, 103
The cock announces dominion, 777
The creek maidens long ago used to tinkle in, 866
The crows around here are getting to be as big, 940
The crows during, 350
The crows, mingled, 197
The day, a spring day already, 860
The de, 216
The debranching foot-wide wound, 178
The devil in me is, I think, among the divines, 322
The double lanceolate, 51
The drop seeps whole, 52
The early, 217
The earth is so little!, 814
The earth makes ocean bottoms mountain tops, 876
The eclipse goes by drawing, 84
The epicurean (and stoic) philosophers, 349
The fall of deep-bottom arctic water down, 348
The falls slopes and a thousand, 95
The fat will let you weaken, 382
The filled out gourd rots, the, 179
The fine branch twigs, 379
The first cool spell has, 180
The flow-finding of the making impulse, 347
The frail-green woods bubble and peep, goldfinches, 347
The gingko’s so all-gold you want to put it in, 697
The grail trees this, 52
The grave is, 802
The grave, though, though it ends, 346
The gray squirrels, fall-fat, having, 814
the grooves fill with moss, 139
the ground flat or, 136
The ground that life’s unpredictability, 61
The hawk before the dusk storm, 181
the heap of knickknacks (knickknackatery), 294
The heaped hemlock, 198
The heights, fastnesses, are sharp and, 345
the high farm beseeches my mind, 130
the highest place, though, is my idea, 475
the hills are alive with indifference, 483
The holdout of brook-glitter in a drought, 345
the honeysucklebushes already weighty, 126
The ice-bound spruce boughs, 308
The last one, 207
The lean, far-reaching, hung-over sway, 98
The least boring way, 844
The least criticism, at least the least, 343
the letters, 145
the light in an eye, 143
The long ridge, 342
The male ringneck picks across hard, 821
the man four-legged with arm braces, 486
The mind derives, 309
The mountain great, 823
The mts, 53
The mule, though, 884
the news of the week is not much better than, 635
The nights dark now, 770
The oak grove’s, 198
The oar squeaks, 182
The ocean will grind, yea or nay, the sky gape, 423
The old man in a shimmy, his arms, 342
The old woman, toothless, 88
The one who wishes, 71
The only, 856
the past lifts: the burning aches flow ashen: the, 658
The pear leaf blister mite should be, 341
The pebble, 382
The people of my time are passing away: my, 689
the petunias are, this morning, 541
The pheasant’s skinny, 339
The philodendron’s ear-leaf, 206
the poet’s wandering finds another, 534
The point of a poem is to become wordless, to find, 340
The poverty of having everything is not, 724
The quickest, 406
the rat was a mole: the arctic air
the real trouble with a blabbermouth is that when, 270
The reality is, though susceptible, 4
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there, 710
The redbird, nesting, 198
The roar of the wind coming, 69
the rot of some deep-wasting roots pops bulbs, 615
The showboat, the main sway of the motion, 321
The small white-headed man pops out, 27
The smart gain, 199
The snow polished, 206
The snowflake knows, 377
The spangled, mauve, 199
The spider, dashing from, 200
the spirit is universal and without, 489
the spirit, though, invisible, 137
The spring, 403
The spruce bough looks so cold, 82
The squirrel, bunching branches, 53
the stone makes, 142
the stone-name signifies, 138
The storm that downed, 206
the strong want to live on the edge, 546
The sumac thicket, 778
The sun seeps the evergreens’, 53
The sun’s angle’s so, 200
The sun’s risings and, 335
The thing, 824
the things of earth are not objects, 141
the thought that, 132
The toeless pigeon in the park, 779
The trouble with style is that it cannot look, 763
the universe is itself, 143
The universe loosens, disperses, 182
The verbal, 795
The very longest swell in the ocean, I suspect, 4
The water nearing the ledge leans down with, 96
The weather here hits so many extremes the, 336
The weatherman says “if, 320
The whirlwind lifts, 54
The white sun, 205
The willow’s knotty threads, 863
The wind across, 405
The wind played, 201
the wind roars, sweeps, whirls, 139
The wind turned, 54
The windiest morning this, 333
The winter day after days, 337
The wonder isn’t that a poem, looked into, 889
The wordwhirl stood, 337
The world (that, 338
The world has dealt (nothing personal), 717
the world, so populous, is so decimated: there, 667
the years pile up substanceless, busted dreams, sharp deductions, 3
The yellow house, 334
the yellow leaves left on the, 558
Their faces fire-red and steaming, the hunters, 309
Thelma had liver spots on her forehead, 813
There being nothing left to tell, 378
There is a warmth in rot, 780
There is no listener in the universe—, 819
there is no tedium, apparently, 101
there is something about, 115
There will be rains I’ll need, 918
There’s a rift of days sunny (not too windy, not, 311
There’s so much more belief than truth, and, 764
these are the longest days, the sixteen-hour, 640
these cold days in May give me the woolly-willies, 610
These geese flying over now will be late, 373
They said today would be partly cloudy: I’d, 716
They say of us old people, look, what do you, 709
They say the best way to be saved is to know, 843
They say the time of the individual’s past: oh, 320
They say, lose weight, change your lifestyle, 685
They told Miss Lou, 89
Things are so temporary, change so imminent, there’s no use, 836
Thinking I’d better be prepared when I went, 746
this boundary stone plunked down, 145
This bright morning, the, 205
This enterprise answers, 312
This fall morning is pretty much, 31
This fellow grazed his woolly goats, 389
This is just a place, 6
This morning I greeted my wife’s
waking with, 709
This morning it was, 319
This morning, with small swirls of the season’s, 681
This old man, a lump with a hat on it, 922
This snow’s, 95
This stricture produces now and then a flash of castles, 318
this summer the weeds, even, and, 565
Though not the savior wished, 388
Though the northering geese, 814
Three orf four miles across, 813
Thunder grumbles, drops, thuds, breaking, 313
time will wash, 201
To stay, 55
To the eye the far ridge’s high slopes, 313
To the intricacy of the webbing, oh, good, 314
To unwrite the writing, unweave, ravel out, 45
today Jerry, Fran, Phyllis and I went, 121
toxic waste, poison air, beach goo, eroded, 228
Trees lash, warp, 202
trust no one: there is not a shred of loyalty, 619
truth persists, if at all, hardly distinguishable, 614
two of the birch trees have got, 521
Tying one to, 387
Uncle John was a cap’m at the beach back when, 652
Up, O Nothing, where the coming together of, 721
Waiting’s sometimes the most important element, 387
Walking is like, 853
wdn’t it be silly to be serious, now, 464
We circle the sinkhole, 202
We don’t live near a stream, but now we do, 705
We don’t want to be just, 183
We had something to do for a moment, 315
We have these, 794
we live again in the bellies, 109
We might, rather than lament nothingness, 386
We must work, 217
We old people sit, you know, we can’t see to, 932
We praise the mind for, 801
We turn away from knowing, 799
we went for a raw walk in the, 101
we were talking about our MFA program, 127
We wound would not want to persuade ourselves, 60
we’ll just be here while we’re here, 578
Wearing away, 205
well, it’s true, clarity is in the extremes, 593
well, it’s true, I’m from North, 589
Well, the white asters, 315
what are the structures of upholding: how do, 671
what are we to think of the waste, though: the, 280
What are you doing out here, 862
What buoys the butterfly, 184
What but the declarations of nothingness shall we gather, 868
What do I find right at the center of my interpersonal, 317
What do you have if you can’t waste it, 185
what does it matter if, 141
What due’s death’s due: is death fifty/fifty, 750
what is the difference between a balanced view, 655
What lightning, 202
What oblivion is is total, 408
What sort of person in, 845
What the power is and what, 310
What to make of a breeze—, 55