WHY I OFTEN DO SOMETHING I'VE DONE BEFORE

It wasn't enough that I dreamed I assembled
The swing-set, it was the jungle gym that woke me, sweating,
And all those years of never having been to Vietnam, those
Years of saying sole and soul, heel and heal. Or me as the shoe-in
For the last to leave from the Outer Banks's infinitesimal hurricane,
Wind like who is keeping score, waves like punch lines, my 
Body as fork, my body as knife, my body as spoon, I was 
I and not something resembling me. Not always easy to tell
The difference. Or when I did doughnuts on the Upper
Mississippi the summer I had a high number in the draft
Lottery and some of my friends did not. Or when I drove over
To Pine Island, Minnesota just to see it and nothing was there.
When I was my own template, body as template, when there
Was no difference between the past and the here and now. I put
Out the china, pull up my dungarees. Who's asking for the tally
Anymore, the little skirmishes that our lives gave us, transplanted
And now rooted, a dunged plot of land, grill fired up for
Carne asada, no one left out except those who want to be,
From socks in the dryer to sex on the dryer, how to perplex
Yourself, flatten yourself only to heave-ho, only to rebuild your temple.

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WHOSE RIVER AND WHOSE TIME

On my three-block walk from 168 High Forest
Street to the main channel of the Mississippi River, I
Remembered, on the road to Homer, the yellow Deer
Crossing sign I saw riddled with bullet holes. The river
Flooding because it wants to. The bashful wife of the River
Merchant knowing she will live alone. Ezra Pound sunning
Himself on a folding chair, the Lido something he walked upon.
And of all the things that flow, the agony of the last year
Pushing its flaws into the next year, the current of the next year
Carrying me not quite all the way I thought it would. Empty
Trough, the farm animals turned away. When someone dared
Me to use any word but aristocracy in a poem and I
Took the bait. When I bet on harmony and it turned
Out inertia won, like using epic and bellyflop in the same
Sentence. Get my feet wet. Gladly I would have been
One of the four bearers of Virginia Woolf's palanquin if
I had been asked. When the river is more of a diversion
Than time, walking to it and walking away from it. What is
The trick to subtraction? Or the present I gave my-
Self, all the while knowing that I tie an awkward bow.

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These two poems are part of a 70-poem series where the last line of each poem coaxes the title of the following poem—a little nudge to get back to the notebook and continue writing the next poem. In this way, I know that the next poem will have as its starting point some connection to the previous poem, and, perhaps, giving a loose cohesion to all 70 poems.