I know I came to appreciate prose and poetry and the power
of the word when I was in high school, Cholla High School,
the public high school--
[APPLAUSE]
--in Tucson Unified School District.
[APPLAUSE]
I was a junior, and there was a young English teacher,
[INAUDIBLE],, who turned me and my classmates on to poetry,
to prose, to the power of the word.
She taught us, she presented to us,
she opened the door to poets at the time.
Chicano poets, Latino poets, women poets,
African-American poets, Native American poets--
call it a precursor to ethnic studies.
Thank goodness Tom Horn wasn't around at the time.
[APPLAUSE]
In that vein, I selected a reading
from local poet, [SPANISH] Alberto Rios
from Nogales, Arizona.
[APPLAUSE]
Yes, even though he does teach at ASU,
give him applause anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
Alberto is author of nine books and chapbooks of poetry,
including The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body,
a finalist for the National Book Award,
three collections of short stories,
and a memoir, Capirotada.
This poem is taken from his 2005 book, The Theater of Night,
and he calls it "A Chance Witnessing of the Morning
Animal."
"The mid-January day's morning light come slowly,
stretching itself before standing, arms first,
hands next, fingers beyond that, nails even farther.
In this light, this bare stretch of light out of dark,
the sun catches with its sharp reaches
the top of the heights of the tree first.
The highest single leaves caught in slivers and crisp,
sudden and barely as if they were a mouse each one,
illuminated in the talons of a rising hawk.
Some white suddenly, and some red and some brown,
with a slight flutter of movement
in the high breeze, each on the tops of these apricot
and peach and pecan, the tops of the desert
plum in this far cold end of autumn, everything
helpless in those first wild leafless few seconds
of morning, the light shining just across the highest
tips of the leaves, then into them,
through them, into their suddenly disembodied twigs.
The bones of the leaves pierced with radiance,
severed, floating in the barbed animal grass
of this momentary light, lifted up, almost,
lifted up and apart from this world.
Until, not a second later, the great tide of light
finds in everything the beginnings of its vast shore--
and the first wave makes its crash,
a crash so great that sound cannot serve it."
Alberto Rios.
[APPLAUSE]