A casual verse anthem to the dynamics of nature, "The City Limit" (1971) demonstrates Ammons' ability to match an emotion with reality. In a straightforward rhetoric achieved through five parallel adverb clauses and an answer begun at the end of line 14, the poet observes the rightness of nature. Robustly assertive, he imposes a rigid graphic discipline on observations of a power he names "the radiance." The resultant equilibrium between natural cycles of decay and reemergence offsets a fear wrought by "the glow-blue / bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped / guts of a natural slaughter." Beyond the haphazard urban "coil of shit" that defines "the city limits," his facile creation of glory out of garbage leads naturally to the "May bushes" and a restrained praise for order.
Critics declare Ammons' concept of God a form of visionary romanticism. Combining loss with emerging faith, "Easter Morning" (1981) reflects candidly on divinity. Sparsely punctuated, but guided by confessional, the narrative follows a spiritual pilgrim through grief over passing generations. In the fourth stanza, a simple statement captures the crux: "the child in me that could not become / was not ready for others to go." In the child's blunt cry of "help, come and fix this," he speaks for the human family in the pervasive fear that "we / can't get by."
In line 53, the speaker perches on the end of childhood and envisions "the flash high-burn / momentary structure of ash," which prefigures a more lasting burn in the final image. In line 71, he banishes doubt by observing the stages of flight executed by "two great birds." Investing them with the incompleteness of earthly lives, the observer remarks that they "flew on falling into distance till / they broke across the local bush and / trees." In the disappearance of the birds, he praises "bountiful / majesty and integrity," his summation of patterns in nature.
