WEBVTT

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I used to live on
the East Coast.

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I'm a transplant to
Montana and to Arizona.

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I grew up in Southwestern
Pennsylvania,

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in an industrial
suburb of Pittsburgh,

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in a working-class
family, where my relatives

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worked in the
factories, and mines,

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and did farming, as well.

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I always had a dream of
leaving the eastern cities

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and enjoying a quiet
life in the West.

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This actually happened
about 10 years ago.

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My husband and I moved
to Big Fork, Montana,

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which isn't far from
the Canadian border.

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And so, for almost
10 years, I've

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lived the quiet life next to
a lake in Northwest Montana,

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working on my art
and going deeply

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into myself, which was hugely
different from my former life,

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the more social
life that I lived

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in the suburbs of
Washington, DC.

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The first poem from my new
book, Hand of the Wind,

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has it setting at the
National Bison Range

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in Moiese, which is about an
hour and a half south of us

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in Big Fork.

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And it's a wonderful place
where you can get in your car

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and you can drive
for three hours

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and see elk,
antelope, bear, bison.

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I couldn't have written this
poem as a suburban soccer mom

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or even as someone who grew up
in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

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It's called "Bison,
Moiese Range."

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Dirty gods in the
dry dust, bison

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roll their shaggy haunches.

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Their great heads shake like
the helmets of Valkyrie.

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It's foreign soil they roll
in, I think, rife with rocks,

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home to elk and rattlesnake.

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What is your secret, bison?

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From your dark, enormous
body, your expansive chest,

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appetites take shape.

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Your pink tongue protrudes.

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Your mouth fills
itself too full.

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You roll and scratch, bellow.

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Near three chattering magpies
come down from the high pine.

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You were the animal life
I love, thick and hot,

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dense with laziness and desire.

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