And the last one comes from what I was telling you
I had learned about poetry working on this book that
learned that I could write sort of on both ends of the spectrum
or that I could try to.
It's called "An Ocean of Code."
And I was trying to write about that sense which I had thought
was a very personal sense but which I'm learning
more and more is a shared sense among many people,
that sense of despair or you could call it depression also
that sort of appears and fades, appears
and fades in waves in our life.
And when you're in one of those phases
you might feel like you're a failure because you
can't engage with any of the world around you.
At least I did.
I feel like those troughs are kind of a failure.
And then I sort of thought, well,
if I'm going to be failing and troughing
and diving and all this, maybe I can at least say something
about it.
Maybe I can at least make something of it.
So this last one comes from that effort.
"An Ocean of Code."
I want to disappear like the glaciers.
To hear the story I've misnamed mine drip like time
back into pebbly soil, trying to decipher
who wrote these praises, who spoke
with crows, who made this dent in mystery solving for pattern.
I break a spine with my foreign sounding name on it
find nothing but type and the same head-haze The furthest out
of the fog I can lumber today, spit shining a smudge of food
off my daughter my thumb rubbing wet circles on her cheek.
A bald eagle fledges from a bare cottonwood on the elk refuge
eyeing the coyote crunching a yearling calf's carcass.
And on the plains, a wave of 1,000 cranes ululate convoluted
calls gaze from the Eocene age to the dusky Platte muds.
A better poet would know what it means
all of it clattering song, the keel of it,
the bloodied scavenging teeth of it.
I'm deaf on the floor of an ocean of code.
But still something globes, bubbles,
floats from my lips rising to riddle the surface.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]