The Story of Our LivesAuthor(s): Michael CareySource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), p. 51Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152951 .

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My father is gone. It is no longer now,

it is thousands of years

before man existed,

the horizon strangely red

and burning.

The story of Our Lives

for Arlen and Fran Gangwish

The buzzing of flies over a carcass.

The promise of life

in the seed and the rain and the soil.

Every morning our eyes come to rest on the horizon.

Such a large sky full of emptiness, clouds heavy with air and floating water.

These are our children growing ever closer to leaving.

Nothing so near as distance.

The Reason for Poetry

There are only two chickens left now

since the wild dogs got done with them.

They don't seem to care, those that remain,

cooing in the coop with a tank full of water

and cracked corn they couldn't finish in a season.

I'll never get over how real the world is

and yet, how easily it disappears,

51

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