I feel this is a moment when I should
say what I would say to my mother when she would say,
but are you happy?
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, and absolutely.
Absolutely.
[LAUGHTER]
I am.
I'm in Tucson.
Cool.
My inner cowboy gets to come out.
Maybe they don't think of them as cowboys here, but I do.
"Almost Tenderly."
It had the heft of old armor, like a breastplate of bronze,
like a shield on hinges.
It's torn apart, like a door.
Inside it, the sea was visible.
The sea and on the shore, a man stripped, beaten, very gently,
tenderly almost.
As if to the man to calm him but, in fact, to no one,
the sea was singing, "here, in the deepening
blue of our corruption, let love be at least one corruption
we chose together."
But the man said nothing.
Why not call restlessness our crown and our dominion
sang the sea.
But the man was a brokenness, like any other moving
until it fails to move the way over time suffering
makes no difference.
His wounds were fresh, still open.
Where the light fell on them, they flashed, like the sea.