I hadn't planned to read this short poem.
But I-- well, I asked Dick Shelton if I could have his
permission to write one desert poem as I had and--
I did live in Phoenix for a year.
And he said it was all right, one short poem for a year.
It's just a very short poem called "Zone."
"In the desert, the snake, sleeping on the rock,
lives by the heat it absorbs.
Nothing in itself, but the terror you grant it.
An obscure notion of time, the circles around a chimney rock,
the floor of an ocean of air."
I wrote that poem while I was sitting on Lake Michigan.
That's true.
Now, somebody asked me once if I wrote about the place I was in.
And I find that generally, it's--
I write about a place very different from wherever I am.
If the poem happens to be about water, of the sea,
I probably would be in the desert when I was writing it
or vice versa.