WEBVTT

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My impulse is to
say good morning.

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I just woke up.

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Can you hear that, John?

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I presume you can hear it.

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I'll read you some poems, the
first of all from The Storm.

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And then some more poems
from the second book.

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Can you hear all right?

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The mic is working
and everything?

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Not very well out here.

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OK.

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How do you adjust
the volume on this?

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You don't.

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You don't at all?

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[LAUGHTER]

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I know how to adjust
the volume on me.

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But I have a tendency, I
notice, to speak softly.

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And if I am speaking
inaudible for you

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back there in the
course of it, please

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don't hesitate to
raise your hand

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or to yell out or something.

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A lot of the poems
in the first book

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are poems which have to
do with a place I grew up,

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which is in Florida
near the Everglades.

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And I lived about
half of my life

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in town and half of my life out
on farms that my father ran.

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And the part that stayed
with me mostly I think

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was the part that I spent
on and around the farms.

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So I left by the time
I was 11 years old.

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But when I started
writing poetry,

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I found that some of the
first poems that I was writing

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were about this area.

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"Whiskey Creek Bridge"

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"Standing on the wooden
bridge at Whiskey Creek

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where my father's old and
new farms meet and join.

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I listen for a moment.

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Everything is silent,
save mosquitoes

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and the stiff dry
sounding dragonflies

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that skim the waters smooth
back for dark specks.

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Below me, poised and
waiting in silver webs

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that flex under the
bridge, huge spiders

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shine and dangle in the
dark, the harmlessly exotic

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and the deadly.

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A black widow looming by
the dry shell of her mate.

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Her womb filled with seed
fed by its father's flesh.

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The hourglass of blood
set in her belly.

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Where water clear as amber runs,
I watch the sluggish traffic

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from the swamps drain
toward the Gulf.

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Cypress branches wrapped in
moss, half sunk, rigid garfish,

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mullet and dull swarms,
cottonmouth and perch,

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broad leaves turning slowly
in the underwater light

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and a variety of turtles, some
soft shelled and graceful,

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some with brilliant faces,
orange and yellow streaked,

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as if their bud shaped heads
were splitting into bloom

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and some harder, darker
whose horned beaks crack

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the other's shells
and dream them

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while they die, all
moving downstream

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to feed the broad
Colusa hatch where

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fresh water and salt
collide and mingle,

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where seabirds, sand sharks,
and bull gators wait.

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When a branch snaps and
falls, breaking the surface,

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I start with the fish,
shivers of rising silver

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that feign and turn, vanish
into the spreading calm

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with a shadow of my
childhood holds them all.

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A darkness deep,
almost beyond my sea."

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