WEBVTT

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And here's a poem that uses
them all more than once.

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It's about a particular place
on the Olympic Peninsula,

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that some of you may know.

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On the northern
coast on the Strait

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of Juan de Fuca between the
Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver

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Island there is a bit
of land that reaches out

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five miles into the sea.

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The lighthouse at the end of it.

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It's a bird sanctuary.

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It's a very beautiful place,
nowhere more than 50 yards wide

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[INAUDIBLE].

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There, in many ways,
my life began, again.

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It's called, "A Guide
to Dungeness Spit."

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Out of wild roses down from the
switching road between pools,

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we step to an arm of
land washed from the sea.

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On the windward shore the
combers come from the strait,

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from narrows and
shoals far below sight.

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To leeward, floating on
trees in a blue cove,

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the cormorants stretch
to a point above us,

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their wings held
out like skysails.

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Where shall we walk?

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First, put your prints to the
sea, fill them and pause there.

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Five miles to the lighthouse,
curved yellow-and-gray miles,

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tossed among kelp, abandoned
with bleaching rooftrees,

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past reaches and currents.

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And we must go afoot at a
time when the tide is heeling.

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Those whistling overhead
are Canada geese.

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Some on the waves are loons,
and more on the sand are pipers.

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There, Bonaparte's gulls
settle a single perch.

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Those are sponges.

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Those are the ends of bones.

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If we cross to the inner shore,
the grebes and goldeneyes

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rear themselves and plunge
through the still surface,

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fishing below the dunes
and rising alarmed,

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higher than waves.

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Those are cockleshells.

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And these are the dead.

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I said we would come to these.

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Stoop to the stones.

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Overturn one, the gray
and white inch-long crabs

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come pulsing and clambering
from their hollows,

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tiptoeing sideways.

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They lift their pincers
to defend the dark.

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Let us step this way.

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Follow me closely
past snowy plovers

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bustling among the sand fleas.

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The air grows dense.

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You must decide now whether we
should walk for miles and miles

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and whether all birds are
the young of other creatures

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or their own young ones,
or simply their old selves

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because they die.

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One falls, and the others touch
him webfoot or with claws,

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treading him for the ocean.

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This is called sanctuary.

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Those are feathers and scales.

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We both go into mist,
and it hooks behind us.

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Those are foghorns.

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Wait, and the bird
on the high root

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is a snowy owl facing the sea.

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Its flashing yellow eyes
turn past us and return.

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And turning from the calm shore
to the breakers, utterly still,

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they lead us by the bay
and through the shallows,

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buoy us into the wind.

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Those are tears.

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Those are called houses,
and those are people.

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Here is a stairway past
the whites of our eyes.

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All our distance has
ended in the light.

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We climb to the
light in spirals,

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and look, between us we
have come all the way,

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and it never ends.

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In the ocean, the spit and
image of our guided travels.

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Those are called ships.

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We are called lovers.

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There lie the mountains.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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