WEBVTT 00:00:10.946 --> 00:00:18.225 - We're grateful to the library for the use of this lovely auditorium and to CATS for videoing our show. 00:00:18.225 --> 00:00:25.503 - Thank you Jim Mannion and all the rest of the staff of CATS that have been here since one o'clock. The 00:00:25.503 --> 00:00:33.065 - Free Verse Poets are delighted recipients of a BCAC grant and we also want to thank our generous sponsors, 00:00:33.065 --> 00:00:38.718 - Blooming Foods, Body Poetry Soaps, Caviar Emptor, Grant Street, and Tesoro Mio. 00:00:39.650 --> 00:00:46.386 - I want to acknowledge the help all my fellow poets have given me in putting this performance together, 00:00:46.386 --> 00:00:52.992 - and in particular, Charles, John, Roger, Antonia, and of course, Carol Hovis, who has again designed 00:00:52.992 --> 00:00:59.662 - our posters and invitations. In addition, I thank each of our entire cast for being so willing to put 00:00:59.662 --> 00:01:01.886 - up posters and distribute flyers. 00:01:02.850 --> 00:01:09.877 - We poets are also indebted to these musicians and windfall dancers who've so willingly offered us their 00:01:09.877 --> 00:01:16.633 - creativity, special talents, and been so generous with their time. I'd like to mention that an arts 00:01:16.633 --> 00:01:23.660 - community spotlight is on the Bloomington Free Verse Poets in the most recent edition of Wind Magazine, 00:01:23.660 --> 00:01:28.254 - number 86, which features a number of poems by each of our members. 00:01:28.514 --> 00:01:35.313 - And we're delighted that the editor of Wind, Chris Green, is up here from Lexington, Kentucky to see 00:01:35.313 --> 00:01:42.045 - our show, Welcome, Chris. The magazine will be available at some of the local bookstores for anyone 00:01:42.045 --> 00:01:48.912 - interested in reading more of our work. We'll have an intermission of 10 minutes and I ask you please 00:01:48.912 --> 00:01:53.086 - to contain your delight and only applaud then and at the end. 00:02:14.114 --> 00:02:25.312 - Origins. I am who I am, a coincidence no less unthinkable than any other. I didn't get a choice either, 00:02:25.312 --> 00:02:29.726 - but I can't complain. Wislawa Jamborska. 00:03:16.258 --> 00:03:25.957 - Our days are numbered. Imagine taking something so completely dark into dawn and then morning and long 00:03:25.957 --> 00:03:34.997 - afternoon blended evening to midnight and dawn to sunrise and calling it the ninth or the 23rd. 00:03:34.997 --> 00:03:44.696 - Imagine that. And how about taking minds away from sleep, stars, sleep, dream and awaken as birds sing 00:03:44.696 --> 00:03:46.014 - in dear mood. 00:03:46.786 --> 00:03:56.019 - Trees sway so worms crawl and deer move again with the whippoorwills crawling in sleep, stars, dream. 00:03:56.019 --> 00:04:05.072 - Taking this away by making up little earth spin sections to call hours and designate six o'clock or 00:04:05.072 --> 00:04:14.124 - 1159. Not mentioning the so many years we've invented and monikered things like 108 BC or 1984. Who 00:04:14.124 --> 00:04:16.478 - could imagine this first? 00:04:17.794 --> 00:04:25.211 - And after they did, what options did H. sapiens really have? Crowding into every decent cow pasture, 00:04:25.211 --> 00:04:32.847 - swarming the river basins, thronging all the poor old globe, having to make things up like math itself, 00:04:32.847 --> 00:04:40.484 - and like religion's a useful filament of our collective imagination. Since if most people were to think 00:04:40.484 --> 00:04:45.918 - more about, or especially to feel more for themselves of what's going on, 00:04:46.050 --> 00:04:59.696 - outside calendar and clock, we might not so blithely watch it be numbered away. Waiting and waiting 00:04:59.696 --> 00:05:13.342 - for amen. I am not from a house. Where I am from there is not a house. Can't prove there's a house. 00:05:14.754 --> 00:05:23.775 - If I blew peanut skins from roasting pans on the front porch or rested in the cool marble shade where 00:05:23.775 --> 00:05:32.707 - the outdoor staircase turned, if I stared out the fly screens in diamond-shaped bars, does that make 00:05:32.707 --> 00:05:41.817 - a house? I am from the names of places. I am from the words in translation. I am from the airplane and 00:05:41.817 --> 00:05:42.878 - the U-Haul. 00:05:44.162 --> 00:05:57.670 - I run up mountains and no one bars my way. I am out from my own smallness, out of my mother's eyes, 00:05:57.670 --> 00:06:11.312 - never mine. I am from laundry and unopened mail, and I marry whomever I like. I am doomed to a world 00:06:11.312 --> 00:06:14.014 - of women, one wife, 00:06:14.626 --> 00:06:20.710 - one daughter, three sisters, and a mother. No brother shared the womb, and no son shared the seed. I 00:06:20.710 --> 00:06:26.855 - was the last of us four, and my father said he did not look at my face for a week, to which my mother 00:06:26.855 --> 00:06:33.300 - always replied with her, oh, John. Her hand brought up to catch a laugh. But her hand there, nevertheless, 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:38.782 - necessary to show that while her God permits a little fun, he prefers it doesn't run amok. 00:06:40.258 --> 00:06:46.772 - I was the last of us four and did not suffer hand-me-downs or share boyfriends or giggly gossip in the 00:06:46.772 --> 00:06:53.350 - North Room upstairs. I ran the creek with my dog, glad I wasn't a girl to sit in the North Room, though 00:06:53.350 --> 00:06:59.674 - I did wish dogs could talk back with something other than their ears and tails and eternal sardonic 00:06:59.674 --> 00:07:06.252 - smiles. Right now, it's just me, my wife and daughter, and the latter is the boss of the ranch, telling 00:07:06.252 --> 00:07:10.110 - us when to get up, when to sleep, when to go to the kitchen, 00:07:10.946 --> 00:07:17.427 - not that his son would be any different. I used to run our house, I'm sure, crowing in Hoosier what 00:07:17.427 --> 00:07:23.909 - I wanted from my iron daybed off the kitchen, where we pumped water, made soap, canned the South 40 00:07:23.909 --> 00:07:30.390 - or so it seemed, and baked enough bread so no miracles would be necessary if Jesus came to call, so 00:07:30.390 --> 00:07:37.002 - long as he brought his own fish. Where we acted out our self-sufficient lives a generation later than 00:07:37.002 --> 00:07:38.622 - the rest of the country, 00:07:39.074 --> 00:07:46.048 - and did not know we had been passed by until we at last turned to plastic and found the others returning 00:07:46.048 --> 00:07:53.022 - to wood. I am doomed to a world of women not complaining mind you, just relating that part of my history 00:07:53.022 --> 00:07:59.664 - so that when you see the agency deliver a boy and see my mighty grin, you'll understand that my son 00:07:59.664 --> 00:08:05.310 - will be my brother in a manner of being a companion against hair curlers and gossip. 00:08:05.922 --> 00:08:12.432 - and all those north rooms up all those stairs, past and present. And if you want us, you'll do well 00:08:12.432 --> 00:08:19.072 - to go downstairs and outside on the front, where we'll be sitting talking mint talk about such things 00:08:19.072 --> 00:08:22.718 - as poetry and sunsets and running collies to the creek. 00:08:41.570 --> 00:08:48.919 - Granny Leah's house, the upper edge of the cupboard door, slanted to match the camber of the stairs. 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:56.778 - A small closing, and behind it, from Russian days, some toys I carried into the garden while the grown-ups, 00:08:56.778 --> 00:09:02.526 - voices rising at times, talked on the brick stoop, and Lizzie brought the tea. 00:09:05.474 --> 00:09:13.759 - I liked the tin cups and plates for sips of pretend juice and double crumbs I fed an austere doll, her 00:09:13.759 --> 00:09:21.963 - painted hair shiny above staring eyes, her limp dress frayed. One bodice button lost, but my favorite 00:09:21.963 --> 00:09:30.006 - plaything was the set of six hollow lacquer dolls, one within the other, each with floral headscarf 00:09:30.006 --> 00:09:31.454 - and folded hands. 00:09:39.810 --> 00:09:48.589 - but my favorite thing. The largest's upper half, twisted from its lower, revealed a smaller doll, pregnant 00:09:48.589 --> 00:09:57.287 - with her own smaller sister. Again, again, and again, the glassy toys squeaked open at the waist, littler 00:09:57.287 --> 00:10:05.491 - and littler, until the tiniest, a solid thumb of a doll, stood mute. Careful to close each one when 00:10:05.491 --> 00:10:09.758 - I'd freed the next. I always lined the siblings up, 00:10:10.690 --> 00:10:27.089 - as if it were possible to have everyone together and in accord. This poem is set in England. Revisiting 00:10:27.089 --> 00:10:39.230 - an old love. When we arrived, the sea was flatish, brown, but smelled right. 00:10:39.874 --> 00:10:48.387 - and the bladder-racked seaweed still popped underfoot. The donkeys trotted along the sand. The pier 00:10:48.387 --> 00:10:56.900 - still stretched on stilts into the tide. And the promenade wall where I had sat upright, smiling in 00:10:56.900 --> 00:11:05.839 - my beret for a picture. Here, because I was a poorly child, needing sea air, still kept its curve around 00:11:05.839 --> 00:11:08.478 - the bay. Later, on Breen Down, 00:11:09.058 --> 00:11:18.111 - We walked through the ghosts of a Roman temple and ancient British forts to the point. I watched the 00:11:18.111 --> 00:11:27.343 - opposing tides rush together and the small boats navigate the channel. Fingering the wild thyme, I sat 00:11:27.343 --> 00:11:35.230 - by the cliff's edge and my heart floated, gull-like, over the waves, tasting the spray. 00:11:43.778 --> 00:11:54.329 - Unpack. Don't you know I can stand in an empty refrigerator box in any secular city and be home? Constant 00:11:54.329 --> 00:12:04.483 - five-note melody of fruit bat, low-grown twisted frangipangy, white sap washed off fingers, and fruit 00:12:04.483 --> 00:12:13.342 - bats bing-bong, dee-dee-dee, out the supper window. Everybody 12 years old and twisting, 00:12:14.274 --> 00:12:25.168 - everybody's fingers in my hair, night hot, day hot, everybody poor but us, everybody else rich but us, 00:12:25.168 --> 00:12:36.063 - everybody in church cool, everybody in the sand stuck, broken bottle triangles on every compound wall, 00:12:36.063 --> 00:12:43.678 - us in church, us always in church, us always swaying, giving, counting, 00:12:44.194 --> 00:12:56.323 - us always missionaries, always upfront, always hot and cold in church. For my poem on origins, I'm going 00:12:56.323 --> 00:13:08.106 - to go very far back and a long way out and try to fit my brief, short, and tiny life into what I call 00:13:08.106 --> 00:13:10.878 - the wilderness of time. 00:13:12.994 --> 00:13:20.527 - As a child, I wrapped myself in blankets on snowy nights, pushed aside the curtain and peered out at 00:13:20.527 --> 00:13:28.136 - the delicate swirling flakes creating my personal playground. I asked for nothing more of snow. I did 00:13:28.136 --> 00:13:35.669 - not have the patience to sit one winter's night by the edge of a pond to see the ice form. Now I see 00:13:35.669 --> 00:13:37.310 - the graffiti of gods. 00:13:37.666 --> 00:13:46.225 - Miles of lines and bedrock scrawled by boulders gripped in the arms of ice inscribing time across entire 00:13:46.225 --> 00:13:54.622 - continents, the press of the hand unperceivable by the narrow senses of a life. I have read that there 00:13:54.622 --> 00:14:02.937 - are more galaxies than grains of sand on the entire earth. I do not know if this is true. I know that 00:14:02.937 --> 00:14:05.790 - stars and insects, ideas and fears 00:14:05.986 --> 00:14:14.064 - are comprehended in numbers of wonder, for I have the mind and senses of a man adrift in a universe 00:14:14.064 --> 00:14:22.222 - of dreams and illusions. The age of the sun exceeds four billion years, and I am as thankful for its 00:14:22.222 --> 00:14:30.623 - warmth and light as if it were my private miracle. I cannot know the eons that created dew-covered webs 00:14:30.623 --> 00:14:35.550 - in summer fields where the sweet, sharp cheering of crickets 00:14:35.746 --> 00:14:44.965 - rises in urgency. Some say in deep space the music of the spheres is silence. Some say a cosmic whisper. 00:14:44.965 --> 00:14:53.745 - I wonder if it is only the fluttering of our imagination. All civilizations fail and disappear. All 00:14:53.745 --> 00:15:02.875 - mountains rot and decay with a slowness that mocks our histories. Spread by tangled rivers into oceans, 00:15:02.875 --> 00:15:05.246 - the peaks settle into mud, 00:15:05.378 --> 00:15:13.625 - and hardened to rock. The moving earth raises the depths into mountains again or drives them into the 00:15:13.625 --> 00:15:21.791 - infernal undercontinents, splitting the earth, raising from fire new lands where the first unfolding 00:15:21.791 --> 00:15:30.442 - flower is the genesis of all gods. In the wilderness of time, rocks are the only texts, the only prophets. 00:15:30.442 --> 00:15:32.382 - An outcrop of weathered 00:15:32.546 --> 00:15:40.772 - Rounded sandstone is an ancient altar where I sit to be calmed by their long endurance, the gathered 00:15:40.772 --> 00:15:49.323 - days and nights of millions of years. Beyond that, I am lost. I live on the precipice of eternity moment 00:15:49.323 --> 00:15:57.630 - by moment. The stars keep their own time, different from mine. I am not a mountain. I am not a river. 00:15:57.922 --> 00:16:10.236 - I am the one who perceives their glory and stumbles mute as the stones into every morning. Sunday Drive. 00:16:10.236 --> 00:16:22.197 - In the spring, when rivers rise, I return to where the river rose in southern Indiana as we drove the 00:16:22.197 --> 00:16:25.950 - back roads after Sunday dinner. 00:16:26.530 --> 00:16:35.578 - sightseeing in our blue Chevy. Among derelict houses, men and women sat in boats half sunk with the 00:16:35.578 --> 00:16:44.627 - weight of their lives. Tables, chairs, machinery salvaged from barns and porches, quilts stacked or 00:16:44.627 --> 00:16:53.766 - strewn, their frayed edges dragging in the muddy water, animals gathered oddly quiet. With trust, my 00:16:53.766 --> 00:16:54.942 - father said, 00:16:55.426 --> 00:17:03.476 - remembering the flood of 37. And when we stopped and pointed, awed by the power of rain become river, 00:17:03.476 --> 00:17:11.367 - patiently lapping at the road's edge as I danced back, a child laughing, unable to imagine tractors 00:17:11.367 --> 00:17:19.338 - plowing bottom land, dust rising sunshot with the planting of corn. At the end of the road, we found 00:17:19.338 --> 00:17:24.862 - again the rundown filling station, only a hard rain from going under, 00:17:25.282 --> 00:17:37.430 - where I drank my mother's promised treat, an orange crush, and nothing more, she said, recalling the 00:17:37.430 --> 00:17:50.180 - shock of chocolate bars alive with worms the year before. And then, on higher ground, I slept the highway 00:17:50.180 --> 00:17:54.270 - home. The second theme is hearth. 00:17:55.138 --> 00:18:03.240 - And Mary Oliver has written, whatever a house is to the heart and body of man, refuge, comfort, luxury, 00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:06.590 - surely it's as much or more to the spirit. 00:18:55.042 --> 00:19:03.631 - Frost Warning. The weather report gives a frost warning, so I start my winter routine, squeezing into 00:19:03.631 --> 00:19:12.642 - the coral space to seal the vents and turn off the outside water. In the utility room, I clean the furnace 00:19:12.642 --> 00:19:21.147 - pilot light, re-tape the duct joints, then go from room to room, closing the storm windows. Finally, 00:19:21.147 --> 00:19:22.494 - in the evening, 00:19:23.106 --> 00:19:32.012 - I make myself go upstairs. The empty quiet, the clean paint shiny in the electric light, startle me. 00:19:32.012 --> 00:19:41.536 - And the space below my ribs gives its familiar, unpredictable lurch. There are no radios tuned to different 00:19:41.536 --> 00:19:50.354 - stations, no clatter along the hallway or feet loud on the stairs. I stand still for a moment, then 00:19:50.354 --> 00:19:52.382 - open the whole closet. 00:19:53.666 --> 00:20:03.372 - No babies swaddled like eisenglass eggs nap on the shelves. No toddlers scramble down, chortling like 00:20:03.372 --> 00:20:13.554 - starlings. No adolescents blower like gargoyles from the corners. I see a jumble of stuffed toys, puzzles, 00:20:13.554 --> 00:20:23.070 - old yearbooks. Behind the children's doors, there's more empty silence. I shut their bedroom vents. 00:20:23.778 --> 00:20:36.735 - fasten the last storm window and ready myself to face this new winter. In the sleeping room, whales 00:20:36.735 --> 00:20:50.598 - and storms rock the steam. Man and boys breathe tea kettles, car crashes, doorbells over the rough-layered 00:20:50.598 --> 00:20:52.542 - in-out wheeze. 00:21:00.162 --> 00:21:08.161 - hanging out the wash. High clouds to the west predict rain, but not soon. I lift the wet lumps from 00:21:08.161 --> 00:21:16.480 - the basket, lay them across my arm, then toss each item along the line. Spread, pin, spread, pin. Piece 00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:24.799 - to piece. Shorts, shirts, and socks. Billow and swing. Thoughts turn inward. My mind rests. The morning 00:21:24.799 --> 00:21:29.598 - chorus of birds sings as it does every day of every spring. 00:21:30.722 --> 00:21:39.431 - Blood circles endlessly, sown seed is harvested and sown again. Persistent prayer moves from mindless 00:21:39.431 --> 00:21:48.055 - repetition to trance to healing. I wash the dishes, sweep the floor, weed the garden, satisfied with 00:21:48.055 --> 00:21:56.679 - each small completion, beads along the ambiguous years. In the afternoon I loosen the pins, pile the 00:21:56.679 --> 00:22:00.094 - dry sweetened clothes in baskets, fold, 00:22:00.418 --> 00:22:11.407 - into drawers and return to writing this poem. February Promises. Each day now is an inkling longer. 00:22:11.407 --> 00:22:23.055 - Each keeps the cold gray until one sudden full blue sky warms the air enough by noon that brushing shaggy 00:22:23.055 --> 00:22:29.758 - horses lets float in the brightness of first flurry of hair. 00:22:30.850 --> 00:22:37.970 - hint of the heavy shedding to come when more weeks of the harsh and drifting than of the sleeting days 00:22:37.970 --> 00:22:45.021 - are done. And a flapping racket at the only liquid edge of the pond marks this first day of courtship 00:22:45.021 --> 00:22:52.418 - for the geese, precursors their desperate social couplings before the weeks of privation, females starving 00:22:52.418 --> 00:22:59.262 - and paling on nests, the belligerent gander's guard. With no promise that pert goslings will grow, 00:22:59.650 --> 00:23:07.335 - voracious in a new green, to learn by mimicking the gaggle's choreography. No promise beyond this ending 00:23:07.335 --> 00:23:14.655 - afternoon's quick drop back to sharp air, which holds the last sun as horses nose their hay and the 00:23:14.655 --> 00:23:20.510 - flock settles into drab grass, clean eyes keeping each moment toward the night. 00:23:33.730 --> 00:23:44.497 - Plus and minus. My father's rear was flat as pita bread, his imagination dull as beige. A domed brow 00:23:44.497 --> 00:23:55.157 - encased such mathematical expertise that full-blown bewilderment with sums provoked impatience with 00:23:55.157 --> 00:23:58.462 - his own daughter's ineptitude. 00:24:00.898 --> 00:24:21.224 - I've no voluptuous hind curves, and true, I cannot add. But oh, come close. In summer's broil, I have 00:24:21.224 --> 00:24:30.590 - pockets filled with snow. Haiti, Iraq, Bosnia. 00:24:32.514 --> 00:24:40.008 - The backyard a church of sorts, maple leaves dying a brilliant death, sky the blue of my mother's Sunday 00:24:40.008 --> 00:24:47.144 - dress. When she called last night, my wife and I had just sat down to watch the news after catching 00:24:47.144 --> 00:24:54.567 - a tree frog crawling up the living room wall, no doubt from one of the plants brought in from the cold. 00:24:54.567 --> 00:25:00.062 - My mother had news of her own about a deer that left the fence to eat pears. 00:25:00.738 --> 00:25:09.143 - How raccoons raided the garden behind the garage and cleaned out the last of the corn. Just called to 00:25:09.143 --> 00:25:17.548 - talk, she said, and we did until the news was over and rain began, pouring a lovely sound like a rush 00:25:17.548 --> 00:25:20.926 - of wings or a timpani of brushed leaves. 00:25:33.890 --> 00:25:42.894 - I am not from a house. Where I am from, there is not a house. Can't prove there's a house. If I blew 00:25:42.894 --> 00:25:52.165 - peanut skins from roasting pans on the front porch or rested in the cool marble shade where the outdoor 00:25:52.165 --> 00:26:00.990 - staircase turned, if I stared out the fly screens and diamond-shaped bars, does that make a house? 00:26:03.490 --> 00:26:13.903 - I am from the names of places. I am from the words in translation. I am from the airplane and the U-Haul. 00:26:13.903 --> 00:26:23.727 - I run up mountains and no one bars my way. I am out from my own smallness, out of my mother's eyes, 00:26:23.727 --> 00:26:31.390 - never mind. I am from laundry and unopened mail, and I marry whomever I like. 00:26:43.330 --> 00:26:49.549 - I have always been a little afraid of July. I suppose because of the electrical storms I endured as 00:26:49.549 --> 00:26:56.079 - a child, sitting with siblings in the kitchen, puppy huddled around mother, shivering when the lightning 00:26:56.079 --> 00:27:02.608 - flashed and cracked across the sky, counting the seconds between flashes and pops to determine how close 00:27:02.608 --> 00:27:09.014 - they were, and finding ourselves out counted sometimes as the false daylight would hit our front porch 00:27:09.014 --> 00:27:13.118 - and knock that electrical thing off the wall time and time again. 00:27:17.346 --> 00:27:23.780 - When dad was there, we didn't huddle but only spoke more softly and carried lamps and flashlights around 00:27:23.780 --> 00:27:30.030 - the farmhouse, giving Halloween scenery to non-October nights. But with him gone, it was necessary to 00:27:30.030 --> 00:27:36.341 - group ourselves and shake, praying for the storm to go away and come again when we were not there. And 00:27:36.341 --> 00:27:42.591 - it was not until I, as an adult, faced the storms that I realized that my mother was as frightened as 00:27:42.591 --> 00:27:46.942 - we all were and must have drawn comfort from four warm bodies near her 00:27:47.490 --> 00:27:54.901 - our need of her strength giving her hers. Heat lightning was bad enough. Flashing spastically in the 00:27:54.901 --> 00:28:02.532 - western sky outlined against the trees on the hill, we could see through the small bathroom window with 00:28:02.532 --> 00:28:09.942 - the real crackerjack electrical storms with the brilliant smashing light that let us see the barn in 00:28:09.942 --> 00:28:16.766 - unreal detail. The loud horrible noise of the thunder coming at us again and again and again 00:28:17.090 --> 00:28:24.914 - was something that still draws me away from windows and makes me sit in walled rooms, in the middle, 00:28:24.914 --> 00:28:32.816 - on a dry wooden chair with rubber leg tips, as I count the seconds, knowing not how close it was, but 00:28:32.816 --> 00:28:40.718 - only that once again I wasn't hit. I live in the tropics now. We have rain but a ton and other things 00:28:40.718 --> 00:28:45.598 - to scare us. And thunder is a surprise said in sentences like, 00:28:46.018 --> 00:28:53.649 - Was that thunder or an airplane? And it is with the greatest of relief that I face July, sitting proudly, 00:28:53.649 --> 00:29:01.064 - defiantly, near windows with my feet wet, touching metal, my tongue aimed at the sky in a Bronx cheer, 00:29:01.064 --> 00:29:08.623 - that I am not condemned to an Indiana farmhouse to wait out the month until sultry, languid August takes 00:29:08.623 --> 00:29:13.374 - over, too lazy, I suppose, to conjure up the displays in the sky, 00:29:13.698 --> 00:29:25.524 - that July had so rudely given us once again. In the living room after dinner. Sitting next to each other, 00:29:25.524 --> 00:29:36.792 - my mother smiling and holding his hand. My dad tells about his four widow women in the neighborhood, 00:29:36.792 --> 00:29:43.486 - their needs and worries, the funny sad stories they become. 00:29:44.034 --> 00:29:52.771 - these women who call on him to fix things, replace a broken pane, mandatory screen, recalk the tub or 00:29:52.771 --> 00:30:01.337 - sink. And even though a stroke has left him legally blind, my mother, his octogenarian chauffeur to 00:30:01.337 --> 00:30:10.160 - his chagrin, he still can read up close and at a slant, see well enough to please these women in their 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:11.102 - widowhood. 00:30:18.754 --> 00:30:29.746 - We are the anger family, looking for the last straw. I was taught and I'm teaching you fate. We are 00:30:29.746 --> 00:30:40.958 - on the mad seesaw. We drop our things where we stand, let them fall, strike now, notice damage later. 00:30:40.958 --> 00:30:48.542 - We are the anger family, here comes the last straw. Smart, so smart. 00:30:49.186 --> 00:30:58.427 - Brilliant screaming raw. We understand all the wrong things. Who can wait? We are on the mad seesaw. 00:30:58.427 --> 00:31:07.850 - With 20 minutes between now and your dark bed scared, you bait me. We shout in the anger family, choke 00:31:07.850 --> 00:31:16.542 - on our last straw. I yank you to the anger playground. We claw and swarm the fury monkey bars. 00:31:17.154 --> 00:31:27.286 - We are booby skaters on a collision course with the mad seesaw. Swift, we are kings of the castle indignant 00:31:27.286 --> 00:31:36.854 - behind our safe draw. Who will depose us, hammer the alligators? We are the crowned anger family, ha, 00:31:36.854 --> 00:31:42.014 - the final straw. We are the dynasty on the mad seesaw. 00:31:49.858 --> 00:31:59.742 - How strange to awake in a city and hear grown men shouting in the night. Robert Bly. 00:32:40.066 --> 00:32:47.683 - I'd really like to get a job so I can get out more and see people. You might like to pay me with one 00:32:47.683 --> 00:32:55.375 - of those paychecks and I could come here into your office. I'd like a job very much. I will punch the 00:32:55.375 --> 00:33:03.067 - clock hard. I will punch it flying and everyone will like me. I will put on clean clothes, throw away 00:33:03.067 --> 00:33:09.854 - all my old smelly things and walk to work in the fresh air. Oh, I will be a civic leader. 00:33:10.434 --> 00:33:18.101 - And with my crisp paycheck, I will build sidewalks and massage parlors. The people will throng to the 00:33:18.101 --> 00:33:25.768 - gleaming M. Dear Plaza and shop and mingle, drink double lattes under Chairman Mao-sized portraits of 00:33:25.768 --> 00:33:32.382 - me. They will clog the courtyard drains with cherry pits. I would so dearly like a job. 00:33:41.794 --> 00:33:49.824 - This poem was inspired by a concert in Bryant Park, part of the Music in the Park series that occurs 00:33:49.824 --> 00:33:57.536 - every summer in Bloomington. It's called Jazz in the Park. Syncopated people converge, sit down, 00:33:57.536 --> 00:34:05.567 - tune up, lie flat, watching chimney swifts slide by, chattering to the bouncing beat of basketballs. 00:34:05.567 --> 00:34:10.814 - People walk, people talk over the crescendo of cymbals and drums. 00:34:11.074 --> 00:34:21.882 - Kids run, improvising, ignoring the runs on the keyboard. Unannounced, maroon shirt, long sleeved, over 00:34:21.882 --> 00:34:32.482 - long arms, blue jeans woman. Black hair, pressed with a silver clip, falls to the hollow of her back. 00:34:32.482 --> 00:34:37.054 - Graceful face, deep brown skin, resonating. 00:34:37.346 --> 00:34:48.616 - A chin composed on thin arms resting on thin knees. She sits alone surrounded by dogs and dogs snarling 00:34:48.616 --> 00:34:59.670 - and sniffing with no cats to vex. A little wine and cheese intervene. Tipsy glasses on uneven ground. 00:34:59.670 --> 00:35:05.630 - Up on stage, strict interpretations of mutable sounds. 00:35:06.210 --> 00:35:14.101 - She looks around, glances at her timing, rises, arranges the long strap of her purse over her narrow 00:35:14.101 --> 00:35:18.398 - shoulder, walks emphatically to the playground swings. 00:35:18.594 --> 00:35:27.713 - and swings and swings from the strings, long hair flying out, high and higher she swings, other swingers 00:35:27.713 --> 00:35:36.571 - all around, a dizziness of ups and downs, accompanied by the tenor sax, threading the reds and greens 00:35:36.571 --> 00:35:45.950 - and browns, white and black jam of people, old, young, older, young, in between the high and the low solos. 00:35:51.586 --> 00:35:59.868 - I did not know her, probably never will. Her tall, long-legged stride as she glides from the park before 00:35:59.868 --> 00:36:08.150 - it is all over. But the band plays on until, thanks for coming folks, the crowd thins and the beat slows 00:36:08.150 --> 00:36:15.486 - to the last few people and their jazzed up lives, leaving me wondering if I understand jazz. 00:36:24.354 --> 00:36:32.072 - a poem about Madrid before I ever went. Madrid, images of orange and brown and specks of black, dust 00:36:32.072 --> 00:36:39.942 - over most things, old wood. Women standing in doorways one step up from the brick street, looking with 00:36:39.942 --> 00:36:47.736 - wrinkles at you, the stranger. Greeting you with a frown more against the sun over your shoulder than 00:36:47.736 --> 00:36:54.078 - against you. Then smiling as you smile. And saying you'll never before use tongue. 00:36:55.586 --> 00:37:03.589 - Madrid, images of children kicking a small ball, hitting it with a stick, posters of Franco and the 00:37:03.589 --> 00:37:11.593 - new king, churches and church music, widows praying with widows, young men in shirts and slacks too 00:37:11.593 --> 00:37:19.836 - small, a bit brown, moorish blood, curly hair, teeth set off with a darker face, talking to women with 00:37:19.836 --> 00:37:23.678 - long black hair, snappy eyes and white blouses, 00:37:24.258 --> 00:37:31.356 - Sitting in the plaza as the sun makes everything about copy itself in long black duplicates across the 00:37:31.356 --> 00:37:38.317 - square. Madrid, images of orange and brown and specks of black. I wonder when I get there if I shall 00:37:38.317 --> 00:37:40.798 - have the same images for my return. 00:37:55.906 --> 00:38:06.234 - Old, bold town square is the stone core of so many hard yards, straight streets, clerk's works, and 00:38:06.234 --> 00:38:16.563 - now this chilly and overgrown with brown weeds vacant lot. Being rummaged by an offhand, don't push 00:38:16.563 --> 00:38:25.342 - me now because it's winter, soft-eyed possum. My car is stuck deep in downtown snow. 00:38:26.082 --> 00:38:35.765 - I borrow a shovel from a wrinkled woman with wig awry, selling guns. Amid all the rifles that could 00:38:35.765 --> 00:38:45.544 - blast my life away, a shovel to dig myself out, not under. Elevators glide, all glass and shaftless, 00:38:45.544 --> 00:38:55.614 - up a wide-walled atrium core of plush downtown hotel, where light cathedral-like begins a downward play 00:38:55.874 --> 00:39:11.369 - to foliage, fountain, and humans thronged, jabbering, showing no alarm at such a lofty silence of no 00:39:11.369 --> 00:39:25.790 - birds. Bradford Pears. Gloriously bridal, Bradford Pears are neatly queued along the streets, 00:39:26.338 --> 00:39:35.433 - A hazard, I should think, for drivers and pedestrians alike, their eyes dangerously distracted. To make 00:39:35.433 --> 00:39:44.265 - things delightfully worse, the wind, like a jealous sister come to town, is brewing trouble, as much 00:39:44.265 --> 00:39:53.359 - as she can muster. Dresses whipping and rising like a kind of laughter, undoing hair and hats. In fact, 00:39:53.359 --> 00:39:54.846 - forget the hats. 00:39:55.266 --> 00:40:06.912 - They're often a hoot of their own, a few in the trees like, look at me, even though the brightest can't 00:40:06.912 --> 00:40:18.671 - compete with Bradford pears in April bloom. Washington Square, San Francisco, 1995. Called here 30 years 00:40:18.671 --> 00:40:25.054 - by a trout fishing in America book cover picture of this 00:40:25.474 --> 00:40:34.458 - Stone Ben Franklin, and slim poplars towering south across Filbert from high pink church spires. Finally, 00:40:34.458 --> 00:40:43.358 - I stand in the park, famous this morning with a loose phalanx of Chinese flowing with their live leaders 00:40:43.358 --> 00:40:51.834 - slow motion boxing with eternity. While ponytail joggers and bright bandanaed moms strolling babies 00:40:51.834 --> 00:40:52.766 - watch too. 00:40:53.570 --> 00:41:04.168 - across the dewy and new green April sunrise. In feathered hats and goatskin lace nightgown, I plan to 00:41:04.168 --> 00:41:14.870 - take an amble into town. I'll visit a store that's staffed by urban sheep whose job it is to count you 00:41:14.870 --> 00:41:23.390 - off to sleep because they peddle a range of colored dreams they parcel and string 00:41:23.618 --> 00:41:32.498 - in palest blues and creams. Our cafe, gaming snakes and ladders alone, with for dice a heart-shaped 00:41:32.498 --> 00:41:41.645 - milk white stone. While I one by one some almonds, roasted light, and count the abacus hours left till 00:41:41.645 --> 00:41:49.726 - night. Our granola old men hungry on a bench, then strut my stuff like any strumpet wench. 00:41:50.690 --> 00:41:58.816 - The traffic will slow its onward-rhythmic stream in case I wish, although their light is green, to cross 00:41:58.816 --> 00:42:06.633 - on my way home to where such blooms are sold for long-stemmed radiance and perfumes. Arms laden with 00:42:06.633 --> 00:42:14.682 - stacked boxes on my head, the woodlands. And I'll mount the steps to bed, but first arrange the flowers 00:42:14.682 --> 00:42:15.998 - in Lalique vase. 00:42:16.482 --> 00:42:25.831 - And all my dreams I'll pour in antique jars at my bedside. So wide and full I'll breathe, floor to ceiling 00:42:25.831 --> 00:42:34.830 - tapestries I'll weave, and one with metaphor, rhyme, and symbol leap among mythical beasts and sonnets 00:42:34.830 --> 00:42:35.966 - in my sleep. 00:42:47.010 --> 00:42:56.699 - We go beyond walls. A few lines from Adrian Rich. Nights like this. On the cold apple bough, 00:42:56.699 --> 00:43:07.742 - a white star, then another, exploding out of the bark. On the ground, moonlight, picking at small stones. 00:44:07.522 --> 00:44:17.166 - My son-in-law told me of this event from his school days. I knew there was a poem there. The Dauntless, 00:44:17.166 --> 00:44:26.440 - Pennsylvania, 1960, for Jameis. It's been snowing steadily for days. Amid indistinct trees blurring 00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:35.806 - the angles of classroom buildings, the severity of dormitories drifts back high as the second floor. 00:44:36.450 --> 00:44:44.844 - When naked boys shift and shove at a window, faces bright with dares, dog dares, double and double dog 00:44:44.844 --> 00:44:53.074 - dares. One flings the window wide. In quick succession, arms flailing, they leap, shrieking into the 00:44:53.074 --> 00:45:01.305 - freezing white, sinking ice shafts the depth of body weight, then burrowing out, frantic, trembling. 00:45:01.305 --> 00:45:05.950 - And there's the cellar door, and beyond it a wood stove, 00:45:06.562 --> 00:45:24.433 - warmth. Circling. When I leave the trail and come through woods to the edge of a pond, a heron rises 00:45:24.433 --> 00:45:32.926 - and flies away over the water on ancient wings. 00:45:35.618 --> 00:45:44.525 - And when everything is still again, I look across the pond to the circling hills, tree covered and sloping 00:45:44.525 --> 00:45:52.849 - to the water's edge. And although the leaves have fallen, there is still color. Narrow twigs make a 00:45:52.849 --> 00:46:01.424 - net of gray. The bark on branches and trees is dappled with brown and orange. And leaves on the ground 00:46:01.424 --> 00:46:04.670 - like ruffled water reflect the colors. 00:46:05.730 --> 00:46:14.213 - Although I'm in southern Indiana, the grass at my feet still green, the pond high from last week's rain, 00:46:14.213 --> 00:46:22.614 - ripples made as a fish jumps running down an otter's slide, keeping it slick and moist. I imagine those 00:46:22.614 --> 00:46:31.016 - sleek creatures tumbling down into the small oxbow the nearby creek has abandoned. When I look at those 00:46:31.016 --> 00:46:33.278 - trees and that color again, 00:46:34.658 --> 00:46:44.880 - I am standing with you in desert country, mountains to the north and south, dry mesquite scattered land 00:46:44.880 --> 00:46:52.350 - stretched around us, the hot wind in our ears, buzzards endlessly circling. 00:47:09.442 --> 00:47:16.528 - Hands that pick cotton have held my body, touched it, made my soul tingle and my spirit rise. Brown 00:47:16.528 --> 00:47:23.969 - hands surround me in patterns, reminding me of the familiarity of 20 years. She would lie down in fields 00:47:23.969 --> 00:47:31.339 - when the smell of cotton in the heat of the sun overwhelmed, letting those hands rest, not knowing they 00:47:31.339 --> 00:47:39.134 - would belong to me in a few short years. Soon, she would begin again to pluck the bulls in her practiced way, 00:47:40.002 --> 00:47:47.286 - sweaters would start to live. She has not picked cotton since we met, nor have I handled plows, discs, 00:47:47.286 --> 00:47:54.641 - or harrows in all those springs since we inevitably found one another. Only later did I dream of images 00:47:54.641 --> 00:48:01.784 - of her, lying on a half-filled sack in an Arkansas cotton field, wondering whose body she would give 00:48:01.784 --> 00:48:05.886 - those hands to once she had done with cotton in Arkansas. 00:48:06.914 --> 00:48:21.448 - and the necessities of her childhood gave way to the luxuries of being an adult. Walking with Henry. 00:48:21.448 --> 00:48:35.550 - Having turned 50, I consider going down on all fours to bark at the wind just for the feel of it. 00:48:36.770 --> 00:48:45.338 - Instead, I walk a while with Henry, the springer spaniel who came scratching at our door last November, 00:48:45.338 --> 00:48:54.153 - a good dog and forgiving of my initial doubt. I ask if he knows why we are taking this rare walk together. 00:48:54.153 --> 00:49:02.391 - He stops to sniff and pee, then runs ahead, nose to the ground, tunneling fields until his neck and 00:49:02.391 --> 00:49:04.286 - ears are burred green. 00:49:05.666 --> 00:49:15.529 - no matter. It is enough to be alive with a dog on a country road, now and then a thrash of quail or 00:49:15.529 --> 00:49:25.787 - a hawk's slow spiral. Turning back, I call Henry home where we sit as I ruffle then unravel his knotted 00:49:25.787 --> 00:49:34.270 - fur and whisper in his ear, Henry, Henry, you dog, you, to which he whines and dances 00:49:34.978 --> 00:49:53.107 - his bobbed tail signing the air. A garden plot. The garden was becoming overpopulated, what was panthers, 00:49:53.107 --> 00:50:03.198 - parrots, frogs, raccoons, Adam, Eve, and now William Tell, 00:50:03.682 --> 00:50:12.125 - Drawn by that apple, he spied in Eve's hand. Bo taught, squinting his arrow's length, Tell was planning 00:50:12.125 --> 00:50:20.649 - to invite Adam to join him in a spot of fun. When he overheard Eve telling her rib man, Will could split 00:50:20.649 --> 00:50:28.849 - my Granny Smith in two clean halves, and was charmed. Eve, bored with unrelenting bliss, begged Will 00:50:28.849 --> 00:50:31.934 - to promise Adam there was small risk, 00:50:32.354 --> 00:50:40.909 - and he, with apple steady, could stand against the tree of good and evil over there. Adam, miserable, 00:50:40.909 --> 00:50:49.463 - but compliant by nature and irritated by the serpent hissing, sissy, sissy, balanced the granny Smith 00:50:49.463 --> 00:50:55.166 - green upon his head and driven by nerves, mouthed the first prayer. 00:51:05.314 --> 00:51:13.378 - This poem was inspired by a visit to Ocracoke Island off the North Carolina coast. Island shore. By 00:51:13.378 --> 00:51:21.683 - day the surf line seems scarce of life, small nervous fish and trods between waves, coquinas burrowing 00:51:21.683 --> 00:51:29.747 - quickly when the water withdraws. But there is more. From earliest light into darkness, sanderlings 00:51:29.747 --> 00:51:35.230 - and willets pace the shore, driving their long bills into the sand. 00:51:36.194 --> 00:51:44.864 - I walk the fringe where the birds feed, but find no trace of their prey. At night, things become clear. 00:51:44.864 --> 00:51:53.367 - When the birds have gone, the prey rises. As each wave slides back to the sea, its place on the shore 00:51:53.367 --> 00:52:01.953 - glows with luminescent splotches. I take a light into my hand, pale blue crustacean the size of a seed 00:52:01.953 --> 00:52:03.454 - from a sunflower. 00:52:05.346 --> 00:52:14.381 - A great calm envelops me, deep silence emanating from this small pulsing creature, food of the shore 00:52:14.381 --> 00:52:23.953 - birds, a meagerness that pulls on me like a star, mysteries gravity. In my 55th year, I finally understand 00:52:23.953 --> 00:52:31.646 - where I am in our galaxy. The Milky Way, scattered above in a broad fluorescent band, 00:52:32.002 --> 00:52:47.329 - far away flecks of light breathing in a time and space I struggle to comprehend is also here, wriggling 00:52:47.329 --> 00:53:00.446 - in the palm of my hand. Regeneration. My wife and I rose in a plane from Indiana fields. 00:53:01.538 --> 00:53:10.187 - soared over Colorado peaks, remembering the quick decade when both children blossomed in hardwooded, 00:53:10.187 --> 00:53:19.007 - wabash ribs of the continent, before each left to follow an earth-encircling dream. Now both were back 00:53:19.007 --> 00:53:27.998 - from Pacific sojourns, Kenai, Shinjuku, Mooresby, Balboa, Wanaroo, and both newlywed. To make us a fresh 00:53:27.998 --> 00:53:30.910 - six, first mixing at that strand, 00:53:31.618 --> 00:53:39.466 - where sea lions lolled on coast rocks sprung up sheer from the frothing sea. Clear streams descended 00:53:39.466 --> 00:53:47.236 - through redwoods to wind heathery bluffs and embrace the ebbing sea. As the young ones compared new 00:53:47.236 --> 00:53:55.007 - plans for Sonoma and Seoul, I could hear my mother's old refrains. Four brothers came from Scotland 00:53:55.007 --> 00:54:00.990 - to the hills of Tennessee. As a girl, great-grandmother sailed from Montrose 00:54:01.250 --> 00:54:09.831 - to Grand Manin Island off the coast of Maine. Then twilight stilled the Mendocino shore, crimson sky 00:54:09.831 --> 00:54:18.412 - patch and seabird calls all gone. And breathing eucalyptus, we walked together out the loop in dunes 00:54:18.412 --> 00:54:27.333 - to open darkling beach, where land was one dim line, tied all the power. And stars came high and random, 00:54:27.333 --> 00:54:28.862 - soft, quick, new. 00:54:41.986 --> 00:54:50.437 - In Kenya, have you ever heard an elephant trumpet across the dark? That sound still haunts me. 00:54:50.437 --> 00:54:59.600 - Kiliguni Lodge, bamboo easy chairs on an open fan veranda. We look across night felt toward a floodlit 00:54:59.600 --> 00:55:08.852 - water hole. Not a twig snaps as elephants glide from darkness. Siphon water with frowning trunks, heads 00:55:08.852 --> 00:55:11.966 - tilted to squirt a gush into deep, 00:55:12.098 --> 00:55:22.283 - peony mouths. Some zebra glance up, continue drinking as if being behind bars protects them. Warthogs 00:55:22.283 --> 00:55:32.367 - jostle for space well away from elephant legs. Those tree bowls, flat ends ringed by great pale half 00:55:32.367 --> 00:55:41.054 - moon toenails. In a minor key, a lurching melancholy looms cadences against the night. 00:56:07.202 --> 00:56:17.965 - Let's take a 10 minute intermission and come back after the second part of the program. Chris Green, 00:56:17.965 --> 00:56:28.622 - the editor of Wind Magazine, has asked me to hold it up so that any of you interested in getting it 00:56:28.622 --> 00:56:34.910 - can recognize it. It will be available at the book corner. 00:56:51.682 --> 00:57:01.971 - In a space, I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone. That is why I often think up an imaginary 00:57:01.971 --> 00:57:12.159 - companion to have breakfast with. Yesterday morning I ate my oatmeal, porridge as he called it, with 00:57:12.159 --> 00:57:14.782 - John Keats, Galway Canal. 00:57:59.874 --> 00:58:09.726 - Dreaming with my feet. My feet sleep, spiny lobsters trekking the ocean floor. I walk to make them wake, 00:58:09.726 --> 00:58:19.297 - sand becoming the street in front of my house. My wife greets me, wondering where I've been. Dreaming 00:58:19.297 --> 00:58:26.334 - with my feet, I say. She looks disappointed, knowing it's the truth again. 00:58:41.090 --> 00:58:52.037 - Barstools, solid, black, and shiny, reflect the red sign floating in a cloud-mottled sky. The black-white 00:58:52.037 --> 00:59:02.776 - checkered floor fades away, and the clouds, drifting like smoke, obscure the rest of the diner. A cat's 00:59:02.776 --> 00:59:11.038 - huge transparent face, tabby gray, looms below the sign. Large aquamarine eyes, 00:59:11.362 --> 00:59:22.472 - draw me in. Do you wonder what I have to say? My cloudy sky eyes unblinking, bewildering, promise you 00:59:22.472 --> 00:59:33.474 - something beyond the checkered floor, shiny stools, neon diner light. Your eyes trace the pattern of 00:59:33.474 --> 00:59:40.990 - my dappled fur, but you don't reach to stroke me. Me, the lost love, 00:59:41.986 --> 00:59:52.596 - The love you never had. The love you don't understand. Walk beyond the stools. Risk the blue space. 00:59:52.596 --> 01:00:03.524 - I sit on a stool, not knowing which way to face. No counter, only this cat mural. But there are stools 01:00:03.524 --> 01:00:10.526 - and the neon sign. Excuse me, I say to no one in particular. Yes. 01:00:11.714 --> 01:00:21.637 - I spin around, no one there. You want something? I spin around again. To what direction shall I speak? 01:00:21.637 --> 01:00:31.270 - Well, yes, something to eat. Like what? The voice is wispy, neither old nor young, female nor male. 01:00:31.270 --> 01:00:38.014 - Oh, some sort of sandwich, a veggie burger maybe, or tuna fish salad. 01:00:40.162 --> 01:00:51.667 - I could have sworn something smacked its lips. That could be done. Oh good, something to drink too. 01:00:51.667 --> 01:01:03.862 - Yes, the voice almost croons. I find myself saying milk in a saucer and then don't bother with the bread, 01:01:03.862 --> 01:01:07.774 - just tuna on a plate. Come on in. 01:01:10.242 --> 01:01:23.717 - Either, jumping down, I pad into the cloudy sky, licking my lips, or I think I want out, I say, as the 01:01:23.717 --> 01:01:26.334 - clouds come closer. 01:01:40.098 --> 01:01:51.550 - dog religion. I'm up on the roof trimming branches that whip our shingles in high wind when my dog comes 01:01:51.550 --> 01:02:02.676 - trotting around the corner of the house and a heavy pine bough whooshes toward her on the path below. 01:02:02.676 --> 01:02:09.438 - She swings easily out of the way and turns to sniff the bough 01:02:10.306 --> 01:02:20.919 - then sniffs all the others landed nearby and without looking up trots on. Everything smells okay to 01:02:20.919 --> 01:02:31.851 - her, so my dog doesn't care about what's overhead making branches fall from the sky. Whether more will 01:02:31.851 --> 01:02:38.750 - fall tomorrow and surely not about who might have made the tree. 01:02:49.858 --> 01:02:58.087 - I'm going to date myself with a reference to Frankie Avalon in this poem, which is titled The Pleasures 01:02:58.087 --> 01:03:06.316 - of Bathing. In frequent tubs of deep, warm water, I trim my nails and raise white sails on the numinous 01:03:06.316 --> 01:03:14.307 - Nile, or, like a rugged Frankie Avalon, camp at night on a bongo beach along the Amazon. Granted, my 01:03:14.307 --> 01:03:19.134 - mind's not what it used to be, but given the cost of travel, 01:03:19.618 --> 01:03:34.729 - It's still the cheaper agency. As we all know, unexpected things do happen. The bottom line. So you 01:03:34.729 --> 01:03:47.422 - stir at 6 a.m. and all's humming along nicely. Boring even. So you doze away again. 01:03:48.162 --> 01:03:56.185 - An hour later, you wake, and the large red job's gone berserk. No kidding. 140 beats a minute, and not 01:03:56.185 --> 01:04:04.208 - a steady one, two, one, two. Uh-oh. A ruckus of stumblings and spikes. And when you stand up thinking, 01:04:04.208 --> 01:04:11.998 - maybe this is for the last time, you really feel like the buffalo are running and you're the range. 01:04:11.998 --> 01:04:16.126 - Of course, it's not an actual attack, you know that. 01:04:16.354 --> 01:04:22.829 - but it's not hard to label anarchy when the hullabaloo's on the inside. Next thing, you're all hung 01:04:22.829 --> 01:04:29.692 - up with a drip, and they've even x-rayed the bellows, and you've oxygen spurting up your breather through 01:04:29.692 --> 01:04:36.167 - little green pipes. When the doctor, cool Charlie, blows in and says, don't you do something on the 01:04:36.167 --> 01:04:38.174 - radio, I recognize your voice. 01:04:54.178 --> 01:05:00.712 - In Memphis, Tennessee, Tuesdays at the zoo were reserved for blacks, which is another way of saying 01:05:00.712 --> 01:05:07.573 - Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays were not. On Tuesdays only, the giraffes 01:05:07.573 --> 01:05:14.499 - came onto the grass and let the boys and girls slide down their necks. On Tuesdays at the zoo in Memphis, 01:05:14.499 --> 01:05:20.510 - Tennessee, peacocks brought forth six gorgeous feathers hidden in their tails for six days. 01:05:21.986 --> 01:05:30.272 - On Tuesdays, flamingos lifted both feet in the air and remained aloft. On Tuesdays in Memphis, Tennessee, 01:05:30.272 --> 01:05:38.793 - even the snakes behaved. My future wife chose a wildebeest to put golden flowers in her hair, then whispered 01:05:38.793 --> 01:05:46.688 - to her of Serengeti. She placed her red shoes on his hind feet, and they danced, laughing, laughing. 01:05:46.688 --> 01:05:49.502 - Finally, suddenly, at five o'clock, 01:05:50.178 --> 01:05:57.903 - Little girls cried and hugged the bears goodbye. Cats licked boys' faces and rubbed their purring chins 01:05:57.903 --> 01:06:03.102 - against nappy heads. The white guards awoke and cage doors rang shut. 01:06:19.938 --> 01:06:27.928 - The energy eddies in so many flickering things. Like this splash of water, protein dash and pinch of 01:06:27.928 --> 01:06:36.235 - salt, I am. Pink and white and hardening green against the spring sky, buds wave. And candles take night 01:06:36.235 --> 01:06:40.190 - like horses throat the silence of a lake at dawn. 01:06:46.466 --> 01:06:56.855 - Camellias in my ginger jar glow the moon's light day long above their tense leaves' darkness. 01:06:56.855 --> 01:07:08.017 - The old horse, belly full and head drooped, eyes the slow staccato lifting line of turf a mole works 01:07:08.017 --> 01:07:14.206 - in dusk outside the stall as black holes make eternity. 01:07:15.394 --> 01:07:26.543 - and morning lights the bright scarves of lychee vendors in Bombay. Sealed, taut gold, blanketed in white 01:07:26.543 --> 01:07:37.054 - rind, its seeds fanning out like dancers. How entire the inner rhythm, the solitude of the orange. 01:07:49.602 --> 01:07:57.605 - This is a prose poem titled Grady's Choice. Under the influence of his own imagination, Grady rises 01:07:57.605 --> 01:08:05.929 - from the comfort of a deck chair and walks to the center of his backyard where luminous ropes are being 01:08:05.929 --> 01:08:14.012 - lowered from a fleet of cumulus clouds. All he has to do is grab one and hang on. No climbing, so it 01:08:14.012 --> 01:08:18.014 - isn't a matter of being in shape, which he isn't. 01:08:18.818 --> 01:08:28.494 - just hang on to the rope of his choice, and he will slowly ascend until he passes through the soft structure, 01:08:28.494 --> 01:08:37.906 - becoming its pilot. As such, he will gently bump other clouds, merge and share their power before emerging 01:08:37.906 --> 01:08:46.175 - reshaped and rerouted, though anywhere the sky is can serve as a port of call. A patient man, 01:08:46.175 --> 01:08:48.638 - Grady sits, then lies down, 01:08:48.866 --> 01:08:57.493 - his hands locked finger-woven under his head, a martini glowing in the grass beside him. As the clouds 01:08:57.493 --> 01:09:06.288 - float overhead with a barely audible hum, Grady already knows which one he will choose. In the distance, 01:09:06.288 --> 01:09:15.083 - a dark balloon appears on the horizon, grating the silence with its repeated blasts of hot air. A vulgar 01:09:15.083 --> 01:09:16.926 - choice, Grady thinks. 01:09:17.634 --> 01:09:31.285 - Some impatient fool has made a vulgar choice. Surely she was lovely before age and illness penned lines, 01:09:31.285 --> 01:09:44.546 - hollows into their own gaunt tale. Supported by her husband at the doctor's office, she sinks stiffly 01:09:44.546 --> 01:09:46.366 - into a chair. 01:09:47.234 --> 01:09:54.382 - Whistling softly, lifting gloved fingers up before her face, she capers them back and forth, 01:09:54.382 --> 01:10:02.298 - pauses to ask, aren't they pretty? You scare the people half to death, Mother, the old man smiles, one 01:10:02.298 --> 01:10:10.060 - hand on her arm. Do you need anything, Papo? She answers. Are you all right? I'm just fine, he says. 01:10:10.060 --> 01:10:17.054 - And again, for her dancing fingers, she's whistling. One chickadee perky in his skull cap, 01:10:17.218 --> 01:10:28.729 - pops onto the feeder near the window. See the little bird, mother? Will you just look at that? Her tune 01:10:28.729 --> 01:10:39.798 - fluting from purse flips. She glances outside, returns to frolicking her fingers, stops long enough 01:10:39.798 --> 01:10:45.886 - to ask, aren't they pretty? Journeys. End of the line. 01:10:46.434 --> 01:10:50.654 - I ride beyond the end of the line. Thomas Tranströmer. 01:11:42.562 --> 01:11:51.529 - I brought you into a fruitful land to enjoy the fruits and the goodness of it. But when you entered 01:11:51.529 --> 01:12:00.766 - upon it, you defiled it and made my heritage an abomination. Jeremiah 2-7. Pilgrimage. Blocked inside, 01:12:00.766 --> 01:12:08.478 - dazed and sullen, I drive for hours. I despair of people. All the beauty blotted out. 01:12:08.642 --> 01:12:17.914 - All the harshness draining from greed, all lies heavy in my gut, contorting me with confusion and ruinous 01:12:17.914 --> 01:12:26.837 - anger. I arch my shoulders, breathe deeply, but the tightness remains. I drive on, do not speak, just 01:12:26.837 --> 01:12:35.846 - drive to get there, to be there on that clear, wild lake. At dusk, standing beside the water, I choose 01:12:35.846 --> 01:12:38.558 - a stone from the cobbled shore 01:12:38.786 --> 01:12:47.385 - Hold it tightly in my hand, press its coolness to my belly. Take this constriction, these tentacles 01:12:47.385 --> 01:12:56.156 - that grip me, pull them into the pores and cracks of this deep and aged vessel. I fling the stone far 01:12:56.156 --> 01:13:05.098 - into the lake. Wash out this hardness, grind our arrogance to sand. Another rock, resplendent from eons 01:13:05.098 --> 01:13:07.678 - of violence, I hold, implore, 01:13:07.874 --> 01:13:26.692 - and pitch away, another and another, until I am finally easy, reassured. Slowly, the hardness will resolve 01:13:26.692 --> 01:13:34.782 - to this mellic and graceful shore. I 70 West. 01:13:36.322 --> 01:13:44.987 - But sore from driving all day in an 82 Civic, he tries to imagine a hundred years ago, Kansas cowboys 01:13:44.987 --> 01:13:53.736 - riding these green and yellow hills, rousting strays out of dry riverbeds, as he tames his thirst with 01:13:53.736 --> 01:14:02.571 - beer, his hunger with a bag of stale chips, thinking what this good old boy needs is an air-conditioned 01:14:02.571 --> 01:14:05.374 - cable TV, motel, bar, and grill. 01:14:05.634 --> 01:14:13.262 - beside the pool, a woman built like a Dallas cheerleader, though down on her luck, her body oiled like 01:14:13.262 --> 01:14:20.446 - an Oklahoma gusher, primed for a chance encounter with a big buckle, good time son of the plane. 01:14:36.418 --> 01:14:45.291 - I am not from a house. Where I am from, there is not a house. Can't prove there's a house. If I blew 01:14:45.291 --> 01:14:54.428 - peanut skins from roasting pans on the front porch or rested in the cool marble shade where the outdoor 01:14:54.428 --> 01:15:03.038 - staircase turned, if I stared out the fly screens in diamond-shaped bars, does that make a house? 01:15:05.346 --> 01:15:14.589 - I am from the names of places. I am from the words in translation. I am from the airplane and the U-Haul. 01:15:14.589 --> 01:15:23.309 - I run up mountains and no one bars my way. I am out from my own smallness, out of my mother's eyes, 01:15:23.309 --> 01:15:30.110 - never mind. I am from laundry and unopened mail. And I marry whomever I like. 01:15:48.866 --> 01:16:00.505 - winter visit at Great Tew, Oxfordshire, England. A brisk walk, the air's skin tingling, crows and church 01:16:00.505 --> 01:16:11.701 - bells sound across frosted thatch and field. Darkening day leans against leaded panes, beach and the 01:16:11.701 --> 01:16:17.022 - broad stone grate draws fire, flares, oak hunks 01:16:17.218 --> 01:16:29.064 - Bark deep-scored burn with slow vehemence. Sudden crunch of tires on gravel. They're back. These have 01:16:29.064 --> 01:16:40.794 - been quiet hours. A 200-year-old house silent behind replastered walls. The boisterous polarities of 01:16:40.794 --> 01:16:44.510 - children for a while elsewhere. 01:16:54.914 --> 01:17:05.459 - Left in the wake of grandchildren's zest, outside the circle of my children's sufficiency, thoughts 01:17:05.459 --> 01:17:16.320 - mint a simple stepping into final shadows, but fail to conjure the swift fade. Late, an owl's ethereal 01:17:16.320 --> 01:17:20.222 - hoo-hoo spans the negative of night. 01:17:37.698 --> 01:17:48.262 - Ia Formosa, an island over the ocean west. And my teacher showed old ways, saying, eat nothing but fresh 01:17:48.262 --> 01:17:58.423 - papaya fruit. And so I did, three times a day. All I wanted of the firm, sweet fruit meat, with only 01:17:58.423 --> 01:18:06.270 - lime to boost the clean, wide taste. Papaya piled like fish at market stalls. 01:18:07.266 --> 01:18:16.884 - translucent treat, though the best never left a tangled mountain's feet, kept there by a village man 01:18:16.884 --> 01:18:26.692 - who offered them from his trees. Past the last bus stop, I'd walk to his hut and trade for fruit, then 01:18:26.692 --> 01:18:35.358 - sit in the shade to eat. And this is what let me forget about food. Let me know new paths. 01:18:36.770 --> 01:18:45.127 - Behind the village, hiking big noons, sheen white, over all a mountainside of breathing green. 01:18:45.127 --> 01:18:53.923 - Quick snakes, striving full, so hot a heaven of leaves. So back here now, I know about walking away 01:18:53.923 --> 01:19:02.720 - again. South this time, perhaps, where papaya began, when seasons were time and no trees sailed yet 01:19:02.720 --> 01:19:06.590 - for Goa, Manila, Macau, or for that island, 01:19:07.394 --> 01:19:22.165 - Where surely now a man will be at his hut with new fruit and the folds of a mountain opening down, profligate 01:19:22.165 --> 01:19:33.982 - with green. Met an Englishman once, asked him what he did and he said, I drive a lorry. 01:19:40.546 --> 01:19:49.333 - A simple statement, yet one remarked with eyes averted and head set rather at an angle between the ashamed 01:19:49.333 --> 01:19:57.874 - and the defiant, somewhere near where all those of the spat upon class of English folk hold their heads 01:19:57.874 --> 01:20:03.294 - when talking to their betters. And I said, interesting work that. 01:20:10.178 --> 01:20:18.497 - And he, with relief, took up the task to explain the ins and outs of what I secretly felt to be a boring, 01:20:18.497 --> 01:20:26.346 - tiring job, one that fitted in somewhere classes below my university parchment and work experience. 01:20:26.346 --> 01:20:34.273 - Yet, with my background of mortgaged farms and ruined businessmen and wooden churches needing paint, 01:20:34.273 --> 01:20:37.726 - what could I say but interesting work that? 01:20:44.642 --> 01:20:51.307 - as if I really cared, and yet I found I did. But what I most remember is not what he told me when I 01:20:51.307 --> 01:20:58.371 - urged him on with my slap on the back quote, but the pain he endured in that interminable silence between 01:20:58.371 --> 01:21:05.169 - his reply and my response to it, when I could have cut him cold and no angry retort of his would have 01:21:05.169 --> 01:21:12.100 - come near my sneer and slight sniff as I searched for something to say to that lesser sort. But instead 01:21:12.100 --> 01:21:14.366 - I remembered in that same silence 01:21:14.850 --> 01:21:28.431 - my own and myself. And I came across, I hope like kin, when I said as matter-of-factly as I 01:21:28.431 --> 01:21:44.670 - could, interesting work that. Always with us, Frank Tennessee. In a field on the edge of the continent state, 01:21:45.250 --> 01:21:53.943 - I find a Civil War graveyard. I climb a stone stile, stoop under the low maples, and come to the foot 01:21:53.943 --> 01:22:02.806 - of a slope. Lines of square, small stones stretch almost to the top of the hill, like broken teeth sewn 01:22:02.806 --> 01:22:12.010 - in the short, thick grass. The historical marker reports more than a thousand soldiers buried by landowners 01:22:12.010 --> 01:22:13.374 - and his slaves. 01:22:26.146 --> 01:22:48.457 - Out of the woods, gray line shining, a sudden evening rain advances across the meadow. My fathers, stenciled 01:22:48.457 --> 01:22:56.030 - in uneven letters on the rough wood, 01:22:56.386 --> 01:23:00.542 - 12091, Major A.C. Stedman. 01:23:53.634 --> 01:24:03.480 - had not been long in this country when I wrote this poem. Night journeying across Nebraska, at a train 01:24:03.480 --> 01:24:13.613 - window I watch evening descend upon the land. The Platte River, stubble fields, cottonwoods are a woman's 01:24:13.613 --> 01:24:17.246 - body seen through her dark nightgown. 01:24:19.490 --> 01:24:27.709 - As she withdraws, I linger, recalling a South African countryside of years ago. Rocked by the syncopation 01:24:27.709 --> 01:24:35.540 - along narrow gauge tracks from Transvaal to Cape, with a varnish teak compartments behind me, I gaze 01:24:35.540 --> 01:24:43.526 - through corridor windows, small head of a springbok etched on every pane, absorbing the deepening dusk 01:24:43.526 --> 01:24:48.798 - of the Karoo. White thorns of a Durin boom snagging the last light, 01:24:49.474 --> 01:24:58.793 - stony outcrops, scrubby tussets, tree aloes all streaking by. Gripping the corridor rail, swaying with 01:24:58.793 --> 01:25:08.203 - a rhythmic ta-ta-ta-ta beneath my feet, I was a child present while her motherland, readying for sleep, 01:25:08.203 --> 01:25:14.174 - dimmed the light. But a stranger here now, I turned my eyes away. 01:25:26.818 --> 01:25:35.977 - A belated note to an old landlady of mine. Forgive me, Frau Erhard. You must have died, but I'm juicy 01:25:35.977 --> 01:25:45.584 - and breathing in pink, and if you're still decked out in your teeth, sitting up nights with the TV lights, 01:25:45.584 --> 01:25:55.102 - waiting for me to come door-slamming home, I'll eat your garden mud clogs. I never wrote you in 20 years, 01:25:55.650 --> 01:26:04.486 - in Buschgewand, whatever that means in Buschgewand, but you can't have died, 100 years old, and still 01:26:04.486 --> 01:26:13.755 - parading me to the neighbors, the butcher, hands off the prize, big American girl, the grin, your steering 01:26:13.755 --> 01:26:23.198 - elbow. You must have died, your grandchildren, grandparents, but who then is chopping the wood for the bath? 01:26:24.290 --> 01:26:32.440 - Who will you let touch your 50s kitchen? I'll eat your TV and your beer and your teeth and your short 01:26:32.440 --> 01:26:40.510 - white fence and your apron flowers if you are not sitting there, watching my phantom fingers go like 01:26:40.510 --> 01:26:48.900 - crazy, nights in your living room, letters out, typing save me, you praising my worklust. You just won't 01:26:48.900 --> 01:26:54.014 - teach me what you know, hands off the axe, away from the stove, 01:26:55.266 --> 01:27:07.202 - I'm sorry you're dead if you're dead, but if you're bright alive, I'll eat the underpants off the line. 01:27:07.202 --> 01:27:18.794 - You're wool ones that keep you warm, and mine. And the final category of the evening is beyond. Mary 01:27:18.794 --> 01:27:20.286 - Oliver said, 01:27:21.090 --> 01:27:26.174 - At any cost, it is the dangerous and marvelous future I mean to find. 01:28:20.578 --> 01:28:26.800 - I always seem to be turning on the shower or arriving at Kennedy Street on the bus or answering the 01:28:26.800 --> 01:28:33.209 - phone at work, reaching over to push down the lighted button to get staccatos of words punctuated with 01:28:33.209 --> 01:28:39.431 - questions. Some things we do that we seem always to do when we do them, forgetting completely about 01:28:39.431 --> 01:28:45.902 - them the rest of the time until we do them once again and think to ourselves, I always seem to be doing 01:28:45.902 --> 01:28:49.822 - this. Not a disturbing thought, but certainly a recurrent one. 01:28:51.074 --> 01:28:57.820 - If it is a morning thing, we wonder where our days go, always seeming to be getting them started but 01:28:57.820 --> 01:29:04.500 - never seeing them end, or if it is evening coming to the same kind of question from the other side. 01:29:04.500 --> 01:29:11.246 - It always seems to be 11.25 a.m., or else it's a quarter to three. My biological clock says to me to 01:29:11.246 --> 01:29:18.260 - look at my wrist twice a day, and it is at those two times that I promptly obey, and every so many times 01:29:18.260 --> 01:29:19.262 - say to myself, 01:29:20.130 --> 01:29:27.844 - It always seems to be 1125 or 245, even though it almost always never is. Life patterns, bits of our 01:29:27.844 --> 01:29:35.634 - lives held up to us by ourselves to look at and wonder why, just that, just then. Since we do so many 01:29:35.634 --> 01:29:43.806 - other things, arrive at so many other places every day of our lives. Don't I ever look up as I am arriving 01:29:43.806 --> 01:29:47.166 - at Ingraham like I did tonight in the rain? 01:29:47.874 --> 01:29:55.234 - or see what my watch has to say for itself at 422, or glance at my action of putting down my fork at 01:29:55.234 --> 01:30:02.085 - the end of the meat. These patterns, these indicators tell me that once again, it is morning, 01:30:02.085 --> 01:30:09.664 - it is evening. Once again, it is a quarter to three and another day has gone, leaving me wondering what 01:30:09.664 --> 01:30:17.534 - I did between 1125 and 1125 besides turn on the shower and see Kennedy Street loom up before me once again. 01:30:28.738 --> 01:30:38.309 - to go forward or beyond in this poem, we first have to go back. We have to imagine that we're in 1992 01:30:38.309 --> 01:30:47.973 - and we're looking ahead to the results. Election year, 1992. I am voting and remembering the 50s. Just 01:30:47.973 --> 01:30:56.606 - out of high school told rock and roll was savage, primitive, appeal to our baser instincts. 01:30:56.834 --> 01:31:04.962 - In hidden basement coffee houses, we tentatively moved from the formal waltz embrace and began to shake 01:31:04.962 --> 01:31:12.777 - it. A small rebellion, suppressed for me in teacher training college, where we were checked back in 01:31:12.777 --> 01:31:20.905 - at the porter's gate by 11 p.m. And as befitted young ladies entering the field of education, we signed 01:31:20.905 --> 01:31:25.438 - in at breakfast, washed, dressed, and in our right minds. 01:31:25.922 --> 01:31:33.610 - I'm voting for the dangerous edge, the glint in the eye, the dreamer who still dreams that dreams can 01:31:33.610 --> 01:31:41.223 - come true, and a remembered evening in Texas, driving with friends in a fast car across county lines 01:31:41.223 --> 01:31:48.911 - to a beer joint in the desert, the night wind in my hair, watching the stars. Then, going home in the 01:31:48.911 --> 01:31:53.886 - sunrise, the world unfolding ahead of us. So, I'm voting for hope 01:31:54.306 --> 01:32:08.624 - and change and dreams and youth and for the time when there was still possibilities, I'm voting for 01:32:08.624 --> 01:32:20.222 - Elvis A. Sheherazade in her bedroom. This is the story I finished before I died. 01:32:21.954 --> 01:32:30.574 - This is the man who insisted at gunpoint, I finished the story before I died. This is the crazy inner 01:32:30.574 --> 01:32:39.194 - voice that deranged the man who insisted at gunpoint, I finished the story before I died. This is the 01:32:39.194 --> 01:32:47.729 - strange and moon-like landscape that echoed the crazy inner voice that deranged the man who insisted 01:32:47.729 --> 01:32:51.870 - at gunpoint, I finished the story before I died. 01:32:53.794 --> 01:33:01.009 - This is the rosy haze of morning that softened the strange and moon-like landscape and silenced the 01:33:01.009 --> 01:33:08.441 - crazy inner voice and soothed the man who insisted at gunpoint, I finish the story before I died. This 01:33:08.441 --> 01:33:15.800 - is the lull in a thrilling story that comes in the rosy haze of morning that softened the strange and 01:33:15.800 --> 01:33:22.366 - moon-like landscape and silenced the crazy inner voice and soothed the man who insisted at 01:33:22.466 --> 01:33:29.809 - at gunpoint I finished the story before I died. Here is my sister who brought us the tea that filled 01:33:29.809 --> 01:33:37.225 - in the lull in a thrilling story and sweetened the rosy haze of morning that softened the strange and 01:33:37.225 --> 01:33:44.495 - moon-like landscape and silenced the crazy inner voice and soothed the man who insisted at gunpoint 01:33:44.495 --> 01:33:51.038 - I finished the story before I died. This is the man outside the window who eyed my sister 01:33:51.362 --> 01:33:59.996 - who brought us the tea that filled in the lull in a thrilling story and sweetened the rosy haze of morning 01:33:59.996 --> 01:34:08.145 - that softened the strange and moon-like landscape and silenced the crazy inner voice and soothed the 01:34:08.145 --> 01:34:16.294 - man who insisted at gunpoint, I finish the story before I died. This is the sun that rose so swiftly 01:34:16.294 --> 01:34:17.182 - and lit up 01:34:17.666 --> 01:34:24.945 - the man outside the window which frightened my sister who spilled the tea that filled in the lull in 01:34:24.945 --> 01:34:32.152 - a thrilling story. The sun that burnt off the haze of morning and flooded the strange and moon-like 01:34:32.152 --> 01:34:39.575 - landscape, but shut out the crazy inner voice that deranged the man who insisted at gunpoint, I finish 01:34:39.575 --> 01:34:47.070 - the story before I died. This is the evening that followed the day in which the sun rose up so swiftly. 01:34:47.938 --> 01:34:55.324 - The evening that swallowed the man at the window and sent home my sister who'd brought the tea that 01:34:55.324 --> 01:35:02.857 - filled in the lull in a thrilling story. The evening that echoed the haze of morning and deepened the 01:35:02.857 --> 01:35:10.759 - strange and moon-like landscape and brought back the crazy inner voice that deranged the man who insisted, 01:35:10.759 --> 01:35:15.486 - at gunpoint, I finish the story before I died. You go to sleep. 01:35:16.642 --> 01:35:24.094 - I'll stay up every night recalling the evening that follows the day that is over so fast when the sun 01:35:24.094 --> 01:35:31.399 - moves so swiftly, disclosing the man outside the window who frightens my sister, who brings the tea 01:35:31.399 --> 01:35:39.216 - that fills in the lull in a thrilling story and sweetens the rosy haze of morning that softens the strange 01:35:39.216 --> 01:35:46.302 - and moon-like landscape and silences crazy inner voices and soothes the man who murmurs in sleep 01:35:47.170 --> 01:36:08.887 - But I finished the story. Tomorrow I'll die. When we are old. When we are old, let the wind reel us 01:36:08.887 --> 01:36:14.750 - in from our field of play. 01:36:15.586 --> 01:36:25.909 - like airy things relieved of suits and masks. In evening light, we shall write out a stride a dream 01:36:25.909 --> 01:36:36.543 - of stars like a new constellation. And who will remember two who were suddenly gone in a rise of wind, 01:36:36.543 --> 01:36:42.014 - seen last together at the edge of the field of play. 01:36:59.618 --> 01:37:11.942 - fine line. In Zimbabwe, shaking in wind, high on the boulder-stroom metopus, desiccated clumps of stems 01:37:11.942 --> 01:37:23.792 - are hardly worth a second glance. But submerged one in water, watch it soak up life. I saw what was 01:37:23.792 --> 01:37:28.414 - drought-dead foliate, green as belief, 01:37:29.026 --> 01:37:43.139 - the resurrection plant. For a child, a fine line was erased. What's deemed lifeless can revive. I sought 01:37:43.139 --> 01:37:57.790 - my twin. In imagination, dug for her bones, laid those fragile remnants, the reassembled stems of Elizabeth. 01:37:58.210 --> 01:38:10.795 - to steep until they too fleshed and she lived again to play with me. Up on the metopus all is quiet 01:38:10.795 --> 01:38:15.326 - and dry, the way it is with graves. 01:38:40.674 --> 01:38:50.463 - in the winter river. From the bridge, long shadows and clear water are schools of fish in murky symmetry, 01:38:50.463 --> 01:38:59.791 - languidly swaying as one. Erratically, it seems, within the gray mass, one form turns, then another, 01:38:59.791 --> 01:39:09.118 - each emitting a silvery flash. As a child, I dropped stones to scatter the fish, to break the order. 01:39:09.314 --> 01:39:18.364 - I watched the slow flowing of a passing log spread to school like smoke in a breeze. Even the shadow 01:39:18.364 --> 01:39:27.684 - of my waving hand unsettles them. In my youth, I gave too much credit to stones. To wary fish, graceful 01:39:27.684 --> 01:39:34.494 - motion may shroud a stalking heron. Now I seek the stillness in all things. 01:39:34.914 --> 01:39:43.130 - In the pale green filigree of flowering maples simple in their eloquence, I measure my own dignity. 01:39:43.130 --> 01:39:51.346 - In the shining wetness of a stone wall after rain is the silent spirit of beings without life. When 01:39:51.346 --> 01:39:59.644 - Sirius is on the heel of Orion sweeping across the Milky Way in late summer, I enter the nearness of 01:39:59.644 --> 01:40:01.534 - those bright creatures 01:40:01.826 --> 01:40:10.579 - whose escape from the distant roar of death and birth of stars whispers them into myths. Now I school 01:40:10.579 --> 01:40:19.246 - with the fish, suspended through the night in our cold river as the snow deepens, clouding the water 01:40:19.246 --> 01:40:28.170 - above us, and I am leery of graceful shadows. But within the anonymity of the river, far into the harsh 01:40:28.170 --> 01:40:29.886 - distances of space, 01:40:30.146 --> 01:40:52.310 - Lost in the swaying mass, in the dull brown camouflage of despair, I too turn in silvery signal. Fountain 01:40:52.310 --> 01:40:59.838 - Void. This close vortex of the land 01:41:01.346 --> 01:41:09.564 - Corrugated yet in deep treed hollows, steeping ridges, vines sanctified and fast against the spill of 01:41:09.564 --> 01:41:17.622 - plains, holds a tight tap down through logic and illusion, through paleological prints of the gene, 01:41:17.622 --> 01:41:25.921 - to the fountain void past all desire. I am the million bees that tangle dogwood lit in greeny filtered 01:41:25.921 --> 01:41:27.774 - beams, the pillar oak, 01:41:28.386 --> 01:41:38.515 - slayed like raw hay in summer-churning bolts of storm, and smothered rock, earth-memoried, eon-capillaried, 01:41:38.515 --> 01:41:48.363 - mute, entropic ocean of our bones. O roiling woods, suspended sharp in the season's flashing eye, impart 01:41:48.363 --> 01:41:57.086 - the vast centripetal calm. Impel the lilting juggernaut of butterfly, transcending warmness, 01:41:57.410 --> 01:42:05.912 - its few days with no shackled dread, and loose the force that opens blossom, feather, leaf, and eye, 01:42:05.912 --> 01:42:14.078 - without a feathering cell of hope, to thrive and burst and nourish more in the everlasting flux. 01:42:26.914 --> 01:42:37.331 - Accepting snow. Perfection marred by erratic tracks suddenly overlapping, locked like magic rings. You 01:42:37.331 --> 01:42:47.849 - lie back dreaming the bird you found the winter you were nine, wings outspread in a sky of ice. Slowly, 01:42:47.849 --> 01:42:55.838 - the last breath like a sliver of glass drawn out the full length of your body. 01:42:56.706 --> 01:43:03.134 - You rise neither warm nor cold and wait unseen beside yourself.