WEBVTT

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"Soft Answers."

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The seed that met water
spoke a little name.

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Great sunflowers were
lording the air that day.

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This was before
Jesus, before Rome.

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That other air was readying
our hundreds of years

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to say things that rain has
beat down on over broken stones

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and heaped behind us
in many slag lands.

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Quiet in the earth,
a drop of water came.

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And the little seed spoke.

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Sequoia is my name.

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I think about writing and I
try to justify my coming so far

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on an occasion like this.

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I think about some
people would say, well,

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the writing is written.

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Why don't people just read it?

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Well, one justification--
or not read it.

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One justification is to come
level somehow and witness

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about this process.

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And I have a feeling, as
a writer, that a poem now

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is anything that begins and
has some kind of promise

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in it and then a payoff.

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And I think about saying this
with "Soft Answers" poem,

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simply because it
just says something,

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then it has a parenthesis
and a closure.

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I don't want to make any
claims for this poem.

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Far from it.

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Sometimes I think there's
too much of a gimmick.

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Just withhold information and
then say at the end Sequoia.

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Well, that's just an idea.

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Still, in a more subtle
way and better ways,

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maybe that's what form does.

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I don't know.