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The last poem I'll read is
called "Waking to My Name,"

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and there is a refrain
in this poem as well.

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It's a refrain in which I
use the phrase "behind me,"

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and variants of that phrase,
to suggest different meanings.

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Something can be behind
you in a physical sense,

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something can be behind you in
the sense that it's your past,

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and you speak of a
friend being behind you

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in the sense of supporting
you, standing by you.

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So there are a range
of senses that I'm

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trying to gather up in this
refrain that is, in my mind,

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crucial for this poem.

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"Waking to My Name."

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"Behind me the woods
fill with the clashing

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of fresh bird calls--

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phoebe, chickadee, robin, wren--

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as the June sun angles in
as if to render visible

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the faint tart scent
of the red pine

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and the white pine, the cedar,
the hemlock, and the fir.

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And behind me, as
I wake hungry for

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my own flowing, slow arising,
the names keep pouring in.

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My grandmother, Ida.

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My mother, Henrietta.

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My sister, Marian.

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Patty, my wife.

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Pamela, my daughter.

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Their faces mingle and
separate, age and grow

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young, as their vowels on
my lips, their consonants

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blunt on my teeth, pluck
them back into themselves,

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into the certain image chosen
by my heart again to remind me

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something of each one
has not been left behind

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and will not change.

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And behind me the mist releases
edge by edge each rock,

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and twig by twig each shrub.

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And the mud glistens as the mud
glistened when my grandfather

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woke beside the stream.

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And leaf by leaf the mist
released the oak and its name,

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and the maple.

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And Thomas, his only son,
and my father's name, Karl.

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As the birch grove caught the
slant light, with a starved fox

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stood transfixed beside a
boulder heaved into its place

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how many mists ago.

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And my heart fills with him,
and Joseph, his name, quivers

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in the cold air,
silver with the aspens

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as their glazed leaves lift
in the hook of the wind

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as he wakes by Ida.

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And behind him the mist releases
eye by eye the covey of quails

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and the white arc tail
bar of the grouse startled

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into flight.

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And waking by
Henrietta, Karl's mind

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flies off after his grandfather
whose name I have lost,

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and he follows him long
into the mist where,

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for the living sake of love--

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Patty and Eric,
Pamela and Kevin--

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I must not yet explore.

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Where stones shudder
in repose and each tree

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breathes its fulfilled life in
the forever of its single time.

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And the June sun
dawns upon my hand--

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nails and knuckles,
fingers, veins, and thumb--

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which reaches out to
the scented woods.

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And the visible names
that merge in the lifting

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mist of my wakening
age as I fly forth

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to the radiant green field
with phoebe and chickadee

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clashing, and robin, and
wren, and my name pulsing,

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repeating with my blood that
most of the full of my life

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is behind me."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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