I'm on the--
I'm on the academic 50-minute-hour.
I'd like to read a couple more poems.
And before finishing off those poems,
I want to thank people for the hospitality here.
It's a very unusual kind of stopping place in many ways.
Good place to see.
I've enjoyed the chance to come from my far part
of the country.
One her slate at school, my mother wrote, winter.
When she ran home, the weather erased it.
For all the pain my mother saw in the world, over her face,
the snow has exploded it's little flowers.
This is the part of the year, she called to us,
excluded from tree rings, children remember.
Around our house where such tall legends,
everything carved by winds and rivers.
Even today, they care, the temporary winds,
the prevailing rivers.
And a giant in the skies still knocks at our chimney.
For a while, children, the trees around us
have those years in them.