Thank you very much.
Can you all hear me?
Yeah.
Lois only read that quote because we
were snorkeling together today.
[LAUGHTER]
We snorkel and snorkel.
I thought I'd begin with the poem called
"The Beginning of September" since it's
the middle of September.
This was a-- This is a poem in which I just--
with the interest-- the fun of it to me
was to let stuff float in and sit there
in whatever way it would.
And just let it accumulate its own shape.
I mean, it's beginning I guess was hating summer to end.
And then, I overheard a snatch of conversation,
which is the second little fragment in the poem.
And that triggered it.
And so I just let it see what would happen.
The Beginning of September.
The child is looking in the mirror.
His head falls to one side.
His shoulders slump.
He is practicing sadness.
He didn't think she ought to and she thought she should.
In the summer, peaches the color of sunrise.
In the fall, plums the color of dusk.
Each thing moves its own way in the wind.
Bamboo flickers.
The plum tree waves.
And the low court is shaken.
The dangers are everywhere, auxiliary verbs, fish bones
of fine carelessness.
No one really likes the odor of geraniums, not
the woman who dreams of sunlight,
and is always late for work, nor the man who would be happy
and altered circumstances.
Words are abstract, but the sentence.
Words are abstract is a dance, car crash, hearts, the light,
it's the design dumb hunger has upon the world.
Nothing is severed on hot mornings
when the deer nibble flower heads
in a simmer of bay leaves.
Somewhere in the summer dusk is the sound
of children setting a table, that's mastery.
Spoon, knife, folded napkin, fork, glasses all around.
The place for the plate is wholly imagined.
Mother sits here.
And father sits there.
And this is your place.
And this is mine.
A good story compels you like sexual hunger,
but the pace is more leisurely, and there are always melons.
[LAUGHTER]
Little mother, little dragonfly quickness of summer mornings.
This is a prayer.
This is the body dressed in its own warmth
at the change of seasons.
They're not always melons.
There are always stories.
Chester found a dozen copies of his first novel
in a used bookstore and took them to the counter.
The owner said, that'll be $112.
Chester said, what?
The guy said, they're first editions, Mac.
20 bucks apiece.
So Chester said, why are you charging me $112?
The guy said, three of them are autographed.
Chester said, look, I wrote this book.
The guy said, all right, 100.
I won't charge you for the autographs.
[LAUGHTER]
The insides of peaches are the color of sunrise.
The outsides of plums are the color of dusk.
Here are some things to pray to in San Francisco.
The Bay.
The mountain.
The goddess of the city.
Remembering.
Forgetting.
Sudden pleasure.
Loss.
Sunrise and sunset.
Salt. The tutelary gods of Chinese, Japanese, Russian,
Basque, French, Italian, and Mexican cooking.
The solute of coffee houses and museums.
The virgin mother and widow moons, hilliness, vistas.
John McLaren, first gardener, St. Francis.
The mother of sorrows.
The rhythm of any life still whole through three
generations.
Wine, especially Zinfandel because
from that Hungarian vine slip came first a native wine
not resonance and sugar heavy.
The sourdough mother.
True yeast and beginning.
All fish and fishermen at the turning of the tide.
The turning of the tide.
Eelgrass.
Oldest inhabitant.
Fog.
Seagulls.
Joseph Worcester, first architect, plum blossoms.
Warm days in January.
She thought it was a good idea.
He had his doubts.
Ripe blackberries.
She said, reside, reside.
And he said, gourd heart.
She said, sunlight, Cyprus.
He said, idiot children nibbling arsenic and flaking paint.
She said, a small pool of semen translucent on my belly.
He said, maybe.
The sayings of my grandmother.
They're the kind of people who let
blackberries rot on the vine.
The child approaches the mirror very fast,
then stops, and watches himself gravely.
So summer gives over, quite to the color of straw,
dove gray to slate blue, furnishings,
a little rain, a little light on the water.
That's the beginning of September.