I'll read just two more poems.
[INAUDIBLE QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE]
No.
Thank you.
You do questions, I give you answers.
I mean, I'm a poet tonight.
[INAUDIBLE] I don't have to tell you,
either I don't suppose what a circuit writer used to be.
No, I minister with many small churches to the poem
called, "The Circuit."
It's particularly significant to me lately
having not too many months to go, going on a poetry circuit.
That's what they call it.
This particular one, the upper New York state poetry circuit
I felt a greater significance in this piece than before.
My circuit-writing great grandfather
rode off on horseback through the hickory woods
each week to galvanize five Methodist churches.
And once, tapping the Sabbath breaking auction,
and shout it over his shoulder-- $0.15
they caught him miles away and saddled him
with an old grandfather clock.
What got you up on your horse in the morning, sir?
Did you rehearse damnation until the trees fell crossways
like a corduroy road?
Did anyone catch his death if you caught yours coming
to hear you freezing in a shed?
Nobody mentioned anything you did except the clock.
No name dropping of God.
No chiming added.
A joke thrown back of a horse has lasted longer
than your rule and reason.
I call you stiff as a pin tied in your bed,
next to a basin and a worn out Bible.
Your beard aimed at the ceiling like a sermon.
Over the distance I can hear you shouting,
where in the name of God is the name of God
and all these damned unsingable useless poems.
Your family fought harder for the clock
than they did for soul.
And now they know it tastes better
than yours having replaced the words.
Beards are no longer hanging out of pulpit.
If God speaks from a bush, it's only by chance.
I save my face and wait.
But bid for every clock I lay my eyes on just
for the hell of it.
Your hell and mine.
Like you, I'm doing time in the hardwood.
Tracking myself in circles.
A lost preacher.
Thank you.