WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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It's such a pleasure and
honor to be here this evening.

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And I just wanted to thank
Diana, Tyler, Katherine

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for the introduction, everyone
connected with the Poetry

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Center--

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staff and board members.

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And thank you all
for being here.

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In the time that
I have, I'm going

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to read a series of short poems
and then the long final poem

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from this latest
book, Sight Lines.

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Can you hear me back there?

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This is fine?

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OK.

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"Black Center."

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"Green tips of tulips are
rising out of the Earth.

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You don't flense a whale or
fire at beer cans in an arroyo

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but catch the budding
tips of pear branches

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and wonder what it's
like to live along

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the purling edge of spring.

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Jefferson once tried to
assemble a mastodon skeleton

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on the White House floor
but, with pieces missing,

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failed to sequence the bones.

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When the last speaker
of a language dies,

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a hue vanishes from the
spectrum of visible light.

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Last night, you sped past
revolving and flashing red,

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blue, and white lights
along the road--

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a wildfire in the dark.

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Though no one you knew was
taken in the midnight ambulance,

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an arrow struck a bull's eye
and quivered in its shaft.

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One minute, gratitude rises like
water from an underground lake.

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Another, dissolution gnaws
from a black center."

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