WEBVTT

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I know I came to appreciate
prose and poetry and the power

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of the word when I was in high
school, Cholla High School,

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the public high school--

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[APPLAUSE]

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--in Tucson Unified
School District.

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[APPLAUSE]

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I was a junior, and there
was a young English teacher,

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[INAUDIBLE],, who turned me and
my classmates on to poetry,

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to prose, to the
power of the word.

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She taught us, she
presented to us,

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she opened the door
to poets at the time.

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Chicano poets, Latino
poets, women poets,

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African-American poets,
Native American poets--

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call it a precursor
to ethnic studies.

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Thank goodness Tom Horn
wasn't around at the time.

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[APPLAUSE]

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In that vein, I
selected a reading

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from local poet,
[SPANISH] Alberto Rios

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from Nogales, Arizona.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Yes, even though he
does teach at ASU,

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give him applause anyway.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Alberto is author of nine
books and chapbooks of poetry,

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including The Smallest
Muscle in the Human Body,

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a finalist for the
National Book Award,

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three collections
of short stories,

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and a memoir, Capirotada.

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This poem is taken from his
2005 book, The Theater of Night,

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and he calls it "A Chance
Witnessing of the Morning

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Animal."

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"The mid-January day's
morning light come slowly,

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stretching itself before
standing, arms first,

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hands next, fingers beyond
that, nails even farther.

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In this light, this bare
stretch of light out of dark,

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the sun catches with
its sharp reaches

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the top of the heights
of the tree first.

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The highest single leaves
caught in slivers and crisp,

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sudden and barely as if
they were a mouse each one,

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illuminated in the
talons of a rising hawk.

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Some white suddenly, and
some red and some brown,

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with a slight
flutter of movement

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in the high breeze, each on
the tops of these apricot

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and peach and pecan,
the tops of the desert

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plum in this far cold
end of autumn, everything

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helpless in those first
wild leafless few seconds

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of morning, the light shining
just across the highest

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tips of the leaves,
then into them,

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through them, into their
suddenly disembodied twigs.

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The bones of the leaves
pierced with radiance,

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severed, floating in
the barbed animal grass

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of this momentary light,
lifted up, almost,

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lifted up and apart
from this world.

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Until, not a second later,
the great tide of light

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finds in everything the
beginnings of its vast shore--

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and the first wave
makes its crash,

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a crash so great that
sound cannot serve it."

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Alberto Rios.

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[APPLAUSE]

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