WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.950 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:01.950 --> 00:00:02.620 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:05.820 align:middle line:84% It's such a pleasure and honor to be here this evening. 00:00:05.820 --> 00:00:10.560 align:middle line:84% And I just wanted to thank Diana, Tyler, Katherine 00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:14.370 align:middle line:84% for the introduction, everyone connected with the Poetry 00:00:14.370 --> 00:00:15.720 align:middle line:90% Center-- 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:17.130 align:middle line:90% staff and board members. 00:00:17.130 --> 00:00:20.250 align:middle line:84% And thank you all for being here. 00:00:20.250 --> 00:00:22.230 align:middle line:84% In the time that I have, I'm going 00:00:22.230 --> 00:00:26.490 align:middle line:84% to read a series of short poems and then the long final poem 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:31.620 align:middle line:84% from this latest book, Sight Lines. 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:32.940 align:middle line:90% Can you hear me back there? 00:00:32.940 --> 00:00:33.570 align:middle line:90% This is fine? 00:00:33.570 --> 00:00:34.410 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:34.410 --> 00:00:35.400 align:middle line:90% "Black Center." 00:00:35.400 --> 00:00:38.620 align:middle line:90% 00:00:38.620 --> 00:00:44.410 align:middle line:84% "Green tips of tulips are rising out of the Earth. 00:00:44.410 --> 00:00:50.380 align:middle line:84% You don't flense a whale or fire at beer cans in an arroyo 00:00:50.380 --> 00:00:54.610 align:middle line:84% but catch the budding tips of pear branches 00:00:54.610 --> 00:00:57.920 align:middle line:84% and wonder what it's like to live along 00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:02.020 align:middle line:90% the purling edge of spring. 00:01:02.020 --> 00:01:07.270 align:middle line:84% Jefferson once tried to assemble a mastodon skeleton 00:01:07.270 --> 00:01:12.250 align:middle line:84% on the White House floor but, with pieces missing, 00:01:12.250 --> 00:01:16.420 align:middle line:90% failed to sequence the bones. 00:01:16.420 --> 00:01:20.815 align:middle line:84% When the last speaker of a language dies, 00:01:20.815 --> 00:01:27.460 align:middle line:84% a hue vanishes from the spectrum of visible light. 00:01:27.460 --> 00:01:34.760 align:middle line:84% Last night, you sped past revolving and flashing red, 00:01:34.760 --> 00:01:38.680 align:middle line:84% blue, and white lights along the road-- 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:42.460 align:middle line:90% a wildfire in the dark. 00:01:42.460 --> 00:01:48.010 align:middle line:84% Though no one you knew was taken in the midnight ambulance, 00:01:48.010 --> 00:01:54.850 align:middle line:84% an arrow struck a bull's eye and quivered in its shaft. 00:01:54.850 --> 00:02:01.270 align:middle line:84% One minute, gratitude rises like water from an underground lake. 00:02:01.270 --> 00:02:07.290 align:middle line:84% Another, dissolution gnaws from a black center." 00:02:07.290 --> 00:02:09.000 align:middle line:90%