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And this poem is a
much more modest notion

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of what art does-- just naming
things before they flash out

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of existence.

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But there is some
resistance in the poem

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also to the modesty
of that formulation.

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It's called "The List."

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"How the frail, shimmering
hollyhocks share in a bloom

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that's deathless and invisible.

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That was the question
that kept students awake

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chewing their quills
in the old school,

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staring at the blank
pages of diaries.

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How much simpler for
me to make my list

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of every shimmering,
dying thing I come across?

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Rainy West Elm
Street gets a line,

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and rain washed Ellicott
Elementary School

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with the puddles in the
schoolyard and the sunrise

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on the flags of the car
lot and the cars themselves

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dozing in the shadows.

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As for the beautiful moments,

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why should I wait around
anymore for the sidewalk to part

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like the Red Sea or
the painter's ladder

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to fill with angels--

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visions that prove
the world a dream?

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The moments that make the world
seem real are all I need now.

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I can add to my list
the foggy morning

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when the children next door
woke me with a trumpet fanfare.

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I can add this evening's
walk with Karen

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to the dock and our comments
on last night's movie.

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What exactly went wrong with it?

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We make the
confusions of ugly art

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beautifully clear by the
time we pause at the tracks

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to count the boxcars--

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close to 100, all sporting
the rust I noticed as a boy.

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They've almost dropped
their pretense of utility.

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They're rattling by again.

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Seems part of a ritual
to make us feel at home.

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And maybe it will
work this time,

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if I don't imagine us
welcomed elsewhere counting

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the boxcars in another world."

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