by A. R. Ammons
6110(though I like brooks
better than diamonds)
(no wonder things work in and
out so well together because
if they didn’t they wouldn’t
6115work long)
(the mind wishes to design other works)
that so much should come
to nothing, an abundance!
so much design be dust!
6120at-onceness
startles marveling
my head, the
skull grown
brittle thin,
6125I hold it
in my hand:
it is the world
to me: I
turn it some
6130as if
it were a
precious object:
but it is
mainly hollow
6135without longitude
or latitude,
good for lolling
and wobbling
when I
6140open a book
to a strict or
famous verse
My Father Used to Tell of an
My father used to tell of an
old lady so old
6145they ran her down and knocked
her in the head with
a lightered knot
to bury her (then
there was another
6150one so old
she dried up and turned
to something good to eat)
what my father enjoyed
most—in terms of pure,
6155high pleasure—was
scaring things: I remember
one day he and
I were coming up in Aunt
Lottie’s yard
6160when there were these
ducks ambling
along in the morning sun,
a few drakes, hens, and a string of
ducklings,
6165and my father took off his
strawhat and
shot it spinning out sailing in
a fast curving glide over the
ducks so they
6170thought they were being
swooped by a hawk,
and they just, it looked
like, hunkered down on their
rearends and slid all the
6175way like they were
greased right under the house
(in those days houses
were built up off the ground)
my father laughed the purest,
6180highest laughter
till he bent over
thinking about those
ducks sliding under
there over nothing
6185my father, if you could rise
up to where he was at, knew
how to get fun straight
out of things
he was a legend
6190in my lifetime
I remember when he was so
strong he could carry me and
my sister, one leaning to
each shoulder, with our
6195feet in the big wooden slop bucket:
he died with not a leg
to stand on
yesterday afternoon it snowed &
I scribbled: “more
6200uncertain (showery) glory,
flurries and sunshine, the
ground dry because as the
flakes melt on touch the sun
gives the moisture back to
6205the wind, also uncertain, the
flakes steeply or widely
rising almost as much as
falling but so thin-scattered,
so fine hardly
6210more than an uninformed
bluster—really nice, the
sun cracking stark bright off
one cloudhead and plunging
paling and dissolving like a
6215flake into a new blue summit”
today’s spanking bright blue
(gold willows and green evergreens)
and chilly, a
little fresh-windy, great day for a walk
Arm’s Length Renders One
6220Arm’s length renders one
helpless
(stiff and loud)
where one cannot intimately
and warmly tickle tits
6225or drive to bust
balls
one must seek
out the subtleties
and rapid
6230adjustments, suggestions, and
speed of the middle way,
using the extreme only as a
total realization of
potential (punch in face):
6235spring drought,
no significant
precipitation for ten days at
least, has persuaded the
brook down to a wink here
6240and there (lust or
rebellion) and
the ground has cracked as if
to swallow birds or fire,
not seed: it’s warming up
6245this morning, to 40, but
forecast for tomorrow is
cold, blusters, and snow flurries:
the poem hangs
on like winter,
6250words flying out and dropping
to greet
the leftover flurries and
chills:
night before last was 19 but
6255nothing was killed, just hit
scorched with the blahs:
one Sunday when I was
eleven my father and
I found the “mineral”
6260spring back
below the Hinson Field in
the woods
and we sat down where
the little hill fell away
6265toward the swamp and talked:
I carved my father’s
initials and my own in
a treetrunk and 1937:
I would not want to see that
6270work again
I’m the Type
I’m the type
FARM BOY MAKES GOOD
(not farming)
or, with more development tho
6275still very commonly,
Redneck Kid Grows Up On
Farm Goes Through Depression
But Thanks To Being In
Big War Goes To College
6280Gets Big Job Making
Big Money
(relatively speaking)
so that I am not much of a
person after all and
6285do not need be, the
lineations of the type
include egregious individuality
broaden lineation or
replicate included space
6290because of last fall’s
late bloom-thinning
the forsythia is
this year not a
golden bulwark but a
6295yellow sprinkle bush
when the wind blows through
my round yew
it changes direction so many
times to get round the branches
6300and needle leaves
it wears itself out
half way through:
eventually, though, demolished
smooth, really put together,
6305it floats on through and out,
a massive, indifferent
tranquility available to give
substance to quick turns or
swerves
6310REDNECK FARM BOY WRITE GOOD
(doesn’t sell much)
WRITE VERY GOOD
(but misses
farm, etc., also other rednecks)
6315MAKE NO MONEY
BUT
WRITE NICE
(tries hard)
(misses the mules and cows,
6320hogs and chickens, misses
the rain making little
rivers, well-figured with
&n
bsp; tributaries, through the
sand yard)
6325REDNECK UNDERSTAND OTHERS
WRITE A LOT
(books too good
to sell, leave on
shelf in bookstore)
6330REDNECK START TO SOUND LIKE
INDIAN
him remember Indian burial
mounds in woods, sandy pine woods,
also used to plow up arrowheads
6335and not think much of it
HIM REDNECK
OPERATE UNDER TOTEM
WASP
(barefoot all summer)
6340(get hookworm)
(pale neck)
Snow Showed a Full Range
Snow showed a full range
today, showers at six
this morning with
6345the temperature falling
through sleet and grainy,
gritty, and, now, dusty
snow
a tying-off action with
6350cold striking, congealing, the
last skirts of action
the lawn is whiter than green
the hemlocks hold touchy sprays
No Matter
No matter
6355how
driving
fast or
dense
(to speak of
6360whited air, indeed, the lake
was wiped out, and the
opposite ridge’s
fields,
house-clusters, dairy barns
6365and silos
fell under) the flakes all
afternoon,
the ground would take no
steady impression
6370and the highway not stay wet:
big icicles hung off the
car like the brocade and
strings of epaulets but
the temperature held just
6375where an outflash of sun
would thaw them loose
so the sun and clouds
needled sewing and unsewing
the white sheets
6380dyeing and bleaching
so it snowed and snowed
the wind blew and the
flakes flew
and it added up to a
6385passing
the lily shoots
hold scoops and sloops of
snow
(keeps off the grass)
6390and the hairy hollyhock’s
young leaves and the hairy
green tongues of oriental poppy
had the right way to
hold snow so it would last
6395fluffed up on stiff hairs
(hairy tongues)
I hope winter will not
end like a Beethoven symphony
with big bams and
6400flurries into June but that
it will ease off
like something by Debussy
so you hardly miss it
It’s So Dry the Brook, Down
It’s so dry the brook, down
6405to nearly nothing to do
falls as if asleep, coasting,
between ledge spills
(some old men walk sloped
forward in a stumble-run,
6410the regular, keyed rhythm
surpassed
into a soothing high dance)
spray churned from the
commotion of a slight ledge
6415spill, though, can sprinkle
overhanging branches
so they freeze loaded in cold
weather, big ice nodes and
chunks interweaving branches so
6420as to ride in hard
high separation
from the central rush,
melt lasting from one cold spell
to the next
6425there is by the gorge
a slope so steep
no one interferes with its
brush and trees
(unshaken by height chills)
6430nature is not a
palimpsest there but a clear book
vine
limber enough to move
entangles a high branch
6435which, snapping off,
sways, held, in the
great tree’s
windy shoals
that which rising
6440takes over can break
down and, no longer
to be let go, no longer uphold
nature’s message is, for
the special reader,
6445though clear, sometimes written
as on a tablet underwater,
the message will blur and
seem to run but
declare itself in a smooth
6450moment to great attention
Today Will Beat Anything
Today will beat anything:
a full day of clarity
up to seventy: but
still no rain
6455(bright skies starving skies)
and the last precipitation
which was snow, though it
fell blanking out the
world, all but the very
6460immediate, had no effect on
the ground, a dampening that
did not close up the
cracks, riffles of snow on
the lawn quickly evaporating:
6465I declare I started to get
out the hose and commence
to water, because that
fertilizer I had the young
man sprinkle about
6470the hedges and under the trees
has been lying out there feed-dry
for two weeks:
when you consider how
dry it is
6475it’s amazing the brook still
runs, clips, brook-brisk: the
ground must be holding
at a height plenty:
it is so odd, upon waking
6480from a nap, to think that
one’s body, including the
back of one’s hand, one’s
fingernails, the calves
and ankles, the face, these
6485things one’s own, are also
implicated and will die,
too, with one, each
its going away
oneself I sing,
6490a person apart,
shoved aside,
silenced
cross references
seems the bushes are being
6495sprayed from a distance green
will the universe become
forever dark:
once in a lifetime
Sight Can Go Quickly, Aerial, Where
Sight can go quickly, aerial, where
6500feet can go not at all
scale clouds out of
prison windows,
splash from heights into lakes
(not drowning, not even
6505getting wet)
from high boughs can
spot rescue in the hills
though marshlands intervene
oh, sight! sight!
6510how light you make us
and how heavy!
say now
pay later
spring drought’s good for being
6515bad for molds
and fluffy funguses that leap
snarl-red in dampness or gross blue:
good for giving the roots
of young sprouts occasion to
6520lengthen into the soil and
be ready for rain when it
comes: good probably
for slowing and toughening
growth so it can better
6525resist frost
sure to be back: good
for killing off anything
too much or too weak: good
for getting early pollen
6530up into the atmosphere:
if butterflies wrote letters
of recommendation their wings
would crack: ripples on brooks
don’t advise or recommend
6535other ripples, and shale spills
to and finds alignment with
brook flow
supposed to go to 80
today, probably did:
6540the early tulips, three
scarlet-velvet red, opened
this morning just in
time to be rained in by
a trivial shower: all
6545that negligible
clouding up and passing over!
These Days Most
These days most
any brown stick
sprouts a green tip
6550how could you, walking in the mts,
be as big as the mts: only by
wandering: aimlessness
is as big as mts
The Cardinal, Slanted Watershed
The cardinal, slanted watershed,
6555in sprouting treebranch
singly singing
and some small bird, grayish
with yellowish back feathers,
dipples and dabbles in the
6560hemlock boughs, flies almost
hard-still into the willowy
withery boughs and hangs
softly on:
the delicate greenworm haunts
6565terminal tips
unseasonably this
unseasonably thatmy
tendency
to exaggerate
6570has
vastly diminished
why, a lady along the way
inquires, is your motor running
so fast:
6575and I say, is there nothing
to catch or flee:
she says, you’re too slow now,
anyway, aren’t you, to catch anything
fine: and whatever has not
6580already overtaken you is
not coming:
madam, I say, I am not
frail and