WEBVTT

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I'm going to end by reading
a poem, a new poem that I

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wrote for my daughter.

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Just thinking, she's
18, or she will

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be 18 in a couple
of weeks, and, yeah,

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just thinking about the
difficulties of letting go.

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Thank you so much.

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It's called "Birth Chart."

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"Wandering off under those
astrological signs charted just

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for you, my quiet trekker,
all those houses and planets

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perfectly straight faced
but still baffling at birth,

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don't think badly
of me when I'm dead,

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or you've gone deep
into the distance

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of love tangles,
moneyed interests,

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and old-fashioned commutes
into life, in other words.

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I did what I could for you
knowing it might not be enough.

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I see now that I can't save
you from suffering and trying

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to hurts you if I'm not kind.

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Though I still want your
life to be untroubled

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and I'm afraid for
you, a fear made out

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of my own fear of a
future, I can't control.

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The world so often a human
heart that eats itself,

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places like New Orleans,
the Swat Valley, Fukushima.

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The places of those remote
destinations for film crews

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and symposium panels are
places people die native

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to those regions and out to
kill or defend life from itself.

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There is so much misery there
that refuses to call itself

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misery and imagines itself
the indecipherable power

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of a righteous day.

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And there are criminals
and dunces elsewhere,

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hideous party line whips, Saxon
and outlook, and proud of it.

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There are the bodies snatched,
and the name candy stripers,

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and the greedy, and
the Martini narcissists

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high on the rising year.

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But let's take the long view.

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These are not your
true companions.

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And out of my reach, your life
will make itself in struggle

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and love, perhaps dependent
on the strength that

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will come if I only let go
when you step out the door now

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as hazel eyed as always
and maybe more so

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this morning in
slate gray Gore-Tex."

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Thank you.

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Thanks.