WEBVTT

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I'd like, mostly I guess,
to be reading poems

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from Kicking the Leaves.

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And a number of the
poems are kind of long,

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so I want to separate the
long ones with shorter

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ones, different ones.

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I am going to read some new
poems, poems that are probably

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not quite finished, but I
think finished enough to read.

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But first now I want
to read the title poem

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from Kicking the Leaves
called, oddly enough,

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"Kicking the Leaves."

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[LAUGHING]

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It's a poem in--

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I always have to look--
it's a poem in seven parts.

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And this is a poem that began,
what now, four years ago--

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no, five years ago this autumn--

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there are dates and ages in it,
including my own, all of which

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are five years off now.

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It began five years
ago in Ann Arbor,

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in my last year
in Ann Arbor when

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I knew that the following
summer I was going back

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to New Hampshire to the farm.

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And I guess that
knowledge started

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me thinking about places
where I had lived--

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the poem is full of
place names, towns.

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It is a farewell to
Ann Arbor, in part,

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and a going to New Hampshire--

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I'm going to wait a second
until you can sit, if you can,

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if you want to.

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"Kicking the Leaves" "Kicking
the leaves, October, as we

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walk home together from the
game, in Ann Arbor, on a day

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the color of soot,
rain in the air.

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I kick at the leaves of maples,
reds of seventy different

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shades, yellow like old paper--

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and poplar leaves,
fragile and pale, and elm

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leaves flags of a doomed race.

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I kick at the leaves,
making a sound

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I remember as the leaves
swirl upward from my boot,

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and flutter.

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And I remember Octobers walking
to school in Connecticut,

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wearing corduroy
knickers that swished

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with a sound like leaves, and
a Sunday buying a cup of cider

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at a roadside stand on a
dirt road in New Hampshire.

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And kicking the leaves
autumn 1955 in Massachusetts,

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knowing my father would die
when the leaves were gone.

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Two-- Each fall
in New Hampshire,

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on the farm where
my mother grew up,

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a girl in the country, my
grandfather and grandmother

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finished the autumn work,
taking the last vegetables

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in from the cold
fields, canning,

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storing roots and vegetables
in a cellar under the kitchen.

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Then my grandfather rake
leaves against the house

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as the final chore of autumn.

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One November I drove up
from college to see them.

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We pulled big rakes, as we did
when we hayed in the summer,

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pulling the leaves
against the granite

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foundations around the house,
on every side of the house,

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and then, to keep them in
place, we cut spruce boughs

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and laid them across the
leaves, green on red,

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until the house was
tucked up, ready for snow

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that would freeze the leaves
in tight, like a stiff skirt.

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Then we puffed
through the shed door,

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taking off boots and
overcoats, slapping our hands,

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and sat in the kitchen,
rocking, and drank black coffee

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my grandmother made, three
of us sitting together,

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silent, in gray November."

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We still do it, by the way.

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The leaves are around
the house right now.

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"Part three-- One Saturday when
I was little, before the war,

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my father came home at noon
from his half day at the office

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and wore his bait sweater, black
on red, with the crossed hockey

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sticks on it, and raked
beside me in the backyard,

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and tumbled in the
leaves with me, laughing,

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and carried me laughing,
my hair full of leaves,

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to the kitchen window where my
mother could see us, and smile,

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and motion to set
me down, afraid

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I would fall and be hurt.

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Four-- Kicking the leaves
today as we walk home together

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from the game, among
crowds of people

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with their bright pennants,
as many and bright as leaves.

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My daughter's hair is
the red-yellow color

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of birch leaves, and she
is tall like a birch,

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growing up, 15, growing older.

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And my son, flamboyant as
maple, 20, visits from college

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and walks ahead of us,
his step springing,

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impatient to travel
the woods of the Earth.

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Now I watch them,
from a pile of leaves

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beside this clapboard
house in Ann Arbor,

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across from the school
where they learned to read,

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as their shapes grow small
with distance, waving.

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And I know that I
diminish, not them,

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as I go first into
the leaves, taking

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the step they will follow,
October's and years from now.

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Five-- This year the poems
came back when the leaves fell.

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Kicking the leaves I heard
the leaves tell stories,

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remembering, and therefore
looking ahead, and building

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the house of dying.

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I looked up into the
maples and found them,

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the vowels of bright desire--

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I thought they had gone forever.

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While the bird
sang, I love you, I

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love you, and shook its
black head from side

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to side, and its red eye with
no lid, through years of winter,

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cold as the taste of chicken
wire, the music of cinder

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block.

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Six-- Kicking the leaves I
uncover the lids of graves,

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my grandfather died at 77 in
March when the sap was running,

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and I remember my
father, 20 years ago,

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coughing himself to death at
52, in the house in the suburbs.

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Oh how we flung
leaves in the air,

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how they tumbled and
fluttered around us

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like slowly cascading water
when we walked together

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in Hamden before the war,
when Johnson's pond had not

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surrendered to houses.

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The two of us hand in
hand, and in the wet air,

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the smell of leaves burning,
and in six years I will be 52.

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Seven-- Now in fall,
I leap and fall

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to feel the leaves
crush under my body,

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to feel my body buoyant
in the ocean of leaves,

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the night of them, night
heaving like death and leaves,

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rocking like the ocean.

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Oh this delicious falling
into the arms of leaves,

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into the soft laps of leaves!

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Face down, I swim into
the leaves, feathery,

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breathing the acrid odor of
maple, swooping, in long glides

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to the bottom of October--

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where the farm lies
curled against winter,

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and soup steams its
breath of onion and carrot

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onto damp curtains and windows.

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And past the windows I see
the tall bare maple trunks

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and branches, the oak with
its few brown weathery remnant

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leaves, and the spruce
trees, holding their green.

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Now I leap and fall, exultant,
recovering from death,

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on account of death, in
accord with the dead,

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the smell and taste
of leaves again,

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and the pleasure, the only long
pleasure, of taking a place

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in the story of leaves."

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[APPLAUSE]

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