Hi.
I'm all emotional tonight.
That poem almost made me cry.
Thank you Natalie.
And thank you also Allison, for inviting us
and for your generosity and hospitality here.
I think I'm just going to read two of the poems that
were published in Sing.
And the first one I'm going to read is about my daughter
when she was born.
So she's here with us tonight.
She's my first child.
And so when I had her, I wrote like a million poems about her.
And so I also thought it would be fun to read this,
because I began this poem at Idlewild, which
is where I first met Natalie.
And it changed over time.
But she heard my first version, so I thought
I would share it this evening.
It's titled, "Dilate."
"One-- placed on my chest, warm, fragile.
As the skin of nightfall, she was heavier than I imagined.
Her eyes untied from northern poles,
from hard unseen winter months.
She arrived safely.
Mid-spring, she scrunched her brow and up look to her father.
There's a turning as pupils dilate as black vernal suns
slip into equinox, this was.
We never forget her first act.
Two-- all is experienced through the body, somebody told me.
Three-- though I did not feel it when the midwife invited,
when he cut the tie, the clean umbilical sever.
When I smiled, I did not feel it.
As they took her to wash, to weigh her, when I said,
you should go with her.
Both of them gone, father and baby.
In, the room in warm orange light, I
listened from behind a clock on the wall.
My own face, heavy plate glass.
Though all experience is through the body,
I did not feel my hands pull, white sheets, my legs
shake when two nurses cooed, "lean back.
Honey, you are bleeding more than expected.'"