I'm going to end by reading a poem, a new poem that I
wrote for my daughter.
Just thinking, she's 18, or she will
be 18 in a couple of weeks, and, yeah,
just thinking about the difficulties of letting go.
Thank you so much.
It's called "Birth Chart."
"Wandering off under those astrological signs charted just
for you, my quiet trekker, all those houses and planets
perfectly straight faced but still baffling at birth,
don't think badly of me when I'm dead,
or you've gone deep into the distance
of love tangles, moneyed interests,
and old-fashioned commutes into life, in other words.
I did what I could for you knowing it might not be enough.
I see now that I can't save you from suffering and trying
to hurts you if I'm not kind.
Though I still want your life to be untroubled
and I'm afraid for you, a fear made out
of my own fear of a future, I can't control.
The world so often a human heart that eats itself,
places like New Orleans, the Swat Valley, Fukushima.
The places of those remote destinations for film crews
and symposium panels are places people die native
to those regions and out to kill or defend life from itself.
There is so much misery there that refuses to call itself
misery and imagines itself the indecipherable power
of a righteous day.
And there are criminals and dunces elsewhere,
hideous party line whips, Saxon and outlook, and proud of it.
There are the bodies snatched, and the name candy stripers,
and the greedy, and the Martini narcissists
high on the rising year.
But let's take the long view.
These are not your true companions.
And out of my reach, your life will make itself in struggle
and love, perhaps dependent on the strength that
will come if I only let go when you step out the door now
as hazel eyed as always and maybe more so
this morning in slate gray Gore-Tex."
Thank you.
Thanks.