The last poem I'll read is called "Waking to My Name,"
and there is a refrain in this poem as well.
It's a refrain in which I use the phrase "behind me,"
and variants of that phrase, to suggest different meanings.
Something can be behind you in a physical sense,
something can be behind you in the sense that it's your past,
and you speak of a friend being behind you
in the sense of supporting you, standing by you.
So there are a range of senses that I'm
trying to gather up in this refrain that is, in my mind,
crucial for this poem.
"Waking to My Name."
"Behind me the woods fill with the clashing
of fresh bird calls--
phoebe, chickadee, robin, wren--
as the June sun angles in as if to render visible
the faint tart scent of the red pine
and the white pine, the cedar, the hemlock, and the fir.
And behind me, as I wake hungry for
my own flowing, slow arising, the names keep pouring in.
My grandmother, Ida.
My mother, Henrietta.
My sister, Marian.
Patty, my wife.
Pamela, my daughter.
Their faces mingle and separate, age and grow
young, as their vowels on my lips, their consonants
blunt on my teeth, pluck them back into themselves,
into the certain image chosen by my heart again to remind me
something of each one has not been left behind
and will not change.
And behind me the mist releases edge by edge each rock,
and twig by twig each shrub.
And the mud glistens as the mud glistened when my grandfather
woke beside the stream.
And leaf by leaf the mist released the oak and its name,
and the maple.
And Thomas, his only son, and my father's name, Karl.
As the birch grove caught the slant light, with a starved fox
stood transfixed beside a boulder heaved into its place
how many mists ago.
And my heart fills with him, and Joseph, his name, quivers
in the cold air, silver with the aspens
as their glazed leaves lift in the hook of the wind
as he wakes by Ida.
And behind him the mist releases eye by eye the covey of quails
and the white arc tail bar of the grouse startled
into flight.
And waking by Henrietta, Karl's mind
flies off after his grandfather whose name I have lost,
and he follows him long into the mist where,
for the living sake of love--
Patty and Eric, Pamela and Kevin--
I must not yet explore.
Where stones shudder in repose and each tree
breathes its fulfilled life in the forever of its single time.
And the June sun dawns upon my hand--
nails and knuckles, fingers, veins, and thumb--
which reaches out to the scented woods.
And the visible names that merge in the lifting
mist of my wakening age as I fly forth
to the radiant green field with phoebe and chickadee
clashing, and robin, and wren, and my name pulsing,
repeating with my blood that most of the full of my life
is behind me."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.