WEBVTT

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And 17 years later, the
poem that Sean will read.

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I want to say a few
words about Steve first.

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He was the first professor
that I met at graduate school,

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and we went out, we sat
down on a little stoop

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out here, on one of Steve's
famous 45 minute smoke breaks,

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in the middle of class.

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And we got to talking about
where my folks are from.

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It turns out that my mom grew
up about a block and a half

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away from him in Holyoke.

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And he asked for
a lot of stories.

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How was it like?

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What was it like?

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And my parents have always been
quiet about that sort of thing.

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From what I could gather, it
was a rough place to grow up.

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And so he decides to tell his
entire childhood story to me

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instead.

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And I remember
thinking at one point,

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I understand my
parents' silence.

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This is "A Poet's Job" and it's
from A Thousand Threads, 2009.

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"No one dead headed
her roses this fall.

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Her chickens are missing
from the backyard trees.

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I don't get to hear her
irritating smoker's cough--

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crack crack, through
the oleander hedge

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between our houses
late at night.

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I woke up last night with
Donne's words on my mind,

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every death diminishes me.

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Adelia here, she said, one
night, calling me to the curb.

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Midnight, moonlight, stars.

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Two coyotes, a male
and female, trotted

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like self-aggrandized
dogs toward us

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down the middle of the street
toward the park at the end,

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where the prey are
plentiful and small.

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Urbanized, not looking at us.

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I hate that big city
haughty indifference.

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At night when a tiny
death squeal wrecks

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the silence like a toy siren,
the neighborhood diminishes,

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and I am left looking at the
moon, which as someone must

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have said exposes everything,
but sheds no light of its own.

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To go out and look at the
moon has been a poet's job,

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at least since the first
Sumerian poet compared

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the color of grazing
cows to the risen moon,

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and their multitude
to the stars.

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To look at the stars and ponder
the countless human verities,

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sometimes one is enough.

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After one Adelia,
there are no more.

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