- 1
La Dispute - Woman (In Mirror)
- 2
La Dispute - Such Small Hands
- 3
La Dispute - King Park
- 4
La Dispute - Andria
- 5
La Dispute - The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit
- 6
La Dispute - Woman (Reading)
- 7
La Dispute - You And I In Unison
- 8
La Dispute - Bury Your Flames
- 9
La Dispute - A Broken Jar
- 10
La Dispute - New Storms For Older Lovers
- 11
La Dispute - The Last Lost Continent
- 12
La Dispute - A Letter
- 13
La Dispute - Sad Prayers For Guilty Bodies
- 14
La Dispute - Why It Scares Me
- 15
La Dispute - You Ascendant
- 16
La Dispute - A
- 17
La Dispute - Damaged Goods
- 18
La Dispute - Extraordinary Dinner Party
- 19
La Dispute - Fall Down, Never Get Back Up Again
- 20
La Dispute - I Shaved My Head
- 21
La Dispute - Nobody, Not Even the Rain
- 22
La Dispute - Said the King To the River
- 23
La Dispute - Sibling Fistfight at Mom's Fiftieth / The Un-Sound
- 24
La Dispute - Then Again, Maybe You Were Right
- 25
La Dispute - A Poem
- 26
La Dispute - A Word Of Welcome And Of Warning
- 27
La Dispute - All Our Bruised Bodies And The Whole Heart Shrinks
- 28
La Dispute - Autofiction detail
- 29
La Dispute - Edit Your Hometown
- 30
La Dispute - Eleven
- 31
La Dispute - End Times Sermon
- 32
La Dispute - Environmental Catastrophe Film
- 33
La Dispute - Five
- 34
La Dispute - Landlord Calls The Sheriff In
- 35
La Dispute - Last Blues For Bloody Knuckles
- 36
La Dispute - Nine
- 37
La Dispute - No One Was Driving The Car
- 38
La Dispute - Safer in the Forest / Love Song for Poor Michigan
- 39
La Dispute - Saturation Diver
- 40
La Dispute - Self-Portrait Backwards
- 41
La Dispute - The Castle Builders
- 42
La Dispute - Top-Sellers Banquet
- 43
La Dispute - Twas The Night Before Christmas
- 44
La Dispute - 35
- 45
La Dispute - A Departure
- 46
La Dispute - Anxiety Panorama
- 47
La Dispute - Edward Benz, 27 Times
- 48
La Dispute - Eight
- 49
La Dispute - Fairmount
- 50
La Dispute - First Reactions After Falling Through the Ice
- 51
La Dispute - Footsteps At The Pond
- 52
La Dispute - For Mayor in Splitsville
- 53
La Dispute - Four
- 54
La Dispute - Fulton Street I
- 55
La Dispute - Fulton Street Ii
- 56
La Dispute - Future Wars
- 57
La Dispute - Harder Harmonies
- 58
La Dispute - He Is Here, He Is Not Afraid
- 59
La Dispute - How I Feel
- 60
La Dispute - Hudsonville Mi
- 61
La Dispute - I Dreamt Of A Room With All My Friends I Could Not Get In
- 62
La Dispute - I See Everything
- 63
La Dispute - In Northern Michigan
- 64
La Dispute - Last Blues
- 65
La Dispute - Man With Hands And Ankles Bound
- 66
La Dispute - Objects In Space
- 67
La Dispute - One
- 68
La Dispute - Only Everything Below
- 69
La Dispute - Rhodonite And Grief
- 70
La Dispute - Scenes from Highways 1981-2009
- 71
La Dispute - See You In Vancouver
- 72
La Dispute - Seven
- 73
La Dispute - Shall Never Lose It's Power
- 74
La Dispute - Six
- 75
La Dispute - St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church Blues
- 76
La Dispute - Stay Happy There
- 77
La Dispute - Steve
- 78
La Dispute - Sunday Morning, At a Funeral
- 79
La Dispute - Ten
- 80
La Dispute - The Child We Lost
- 81
La Dispute - The Field
- 82
La Dispute - The Surgeon And The Scientist
- 83
La Dispute - There You Are (Hiding Place)
- 84
La Dispute - Thirteen
- 85
La Dispute - Three
- 86
La Dispute - To Withstand The Force Of Storms
- 87
La Dispute - Twelve
- 88
La Dispute - Two
- 89
La Dispute - Untitled
- 90
La Dispute - View From Our Bedroom Window
Seven
La Dispute
Spring-cleaning his little home.
First with brooms, then with dusters;
Then on ladders and steps and chairs,
With a brush and a pail of whitewash;
Till he had dust in his throats and eyes,
And splashes of whitewash all over his black fur.
Spring was moving in the air above
And in the earth below and around him,
Penetrating even his small dark and lowly little house
With its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
It was small wonder, then,
That he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor
And said, "Bother!"
Something up above was calling him.
So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged
and then scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped,
Working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself,
"Up we go! Up we go!"
Until at last, pop.
His snout came out into the sunlight
And he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.
"This is fine," he said to himself.
And jumping off all his four legs at once
In the joy of living and the delight of spring,
He pursued his way across the meadow
Till he reached the hedge on the further side.
Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily,
Finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting
everything happy, and progressive, and occupied.
And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him,
He somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be
The only idle dog among all these busy citizens.
He thought his happiness was complete when,
As he meandered aimlessly along,
Suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river.
Never in his life had he seen a river before
This sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling,
Gripping this with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh,
To fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free,
And were caught and held again.
All was a-shake and a-shiver
Flints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.
The mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated.
By the side of the river he trotted as on trots,
when very small, by the side of a man
who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories;
And when tired at last, he sat on the bank,
While the river chattered on to him,
A babbling procession of the best stories in the world,
Sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.
The mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness,
Spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment,
And leaned back blissfully.
"What a day I'm having," he said.
