This next poem I'm going to read was
inspired by a friend of mine who was going
through a difficult divorce.
And we were walking in Soho in New York on a beautiful spring
day just almost as beautiful as today was here in Tucson
and I couldn't be happier.
Whoops tragedy.
All your secrets.
All my secrets.
And we were walking in New York it was a beautiful day
and everybody was out.
It's one of those first few days of spring.
And suddenly I get this tug on my shoulder from my friend
and he has panic in his eyes.
And he looks at me and he goes what if the next life
is exactly like this life?
[LAUGHTER]
I thought it was such a brilliant way
of capturing someone's fear that the first two lines of the poem
are his.
"Transformations".
Frightened of the next life being exactly like this life
he asked to be a bird so he could
hide in the trees at night and not be alone.
Someone must have heard his cry.
And before he had no more lift in his being
an old Willow offered him her weight
so he could feel light again.
The birds that knew him from his long walks
accepted him like he was one from the nest.
Though what plagued him as a man was not
a fear of heights or sudden descents into the void.
Do not follow me, he pleaded to that self.
Despite unending gyrations he could not
eject the part that parted him from the Earth resigned
that it would live through another death.
He simply let himself fall to her window
from where he had stood one night
and asked to be a man again to reveal his heart to the morning
that had not broken.