WEBVTT

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I'll do few poems from The Lady
in Kicking Horse Reservoir.

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This first one-- these
will be Montana pieces.

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And this first one is
called "Hot Springs."

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This is a town near a
lake where I go fishing up

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in the Indian reservation.

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And as you drive
into it, you sort of

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think, well, maybe there's 3,000
- 4,000 people living here.

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There are quite a few buildings,
but it seems almost deserted.

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And then you come to find
there's only about 700 people.

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That's because the
rumor that the springs

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had therapeutic values proved
to be false about 30 years ago.

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And so people who build a
lot of motels and things,

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thinking they would make a
lot of money, went broke.

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And people stopped coming.

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"You arrived,
arthritic, for the cure,

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therapeutic qualities of
water, and the therapeutic air.

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Twenty five years later,
you limp out of bars,

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hoping rumors will revive.

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A doctor will discover something
curative in natural steam.

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You have a choice of
abandoned homes to sleep in.

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Motels, constructed on
the come, went broke

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before the final
board was nailed.

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Operative still, your tainted
fantasy and the deluxe hotel.

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You have ached, taking
your aches up the hill.

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Another battery of
tests, terrible probe

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of word and needle.

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Always the fatal word.

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When we get old we crumble.

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They wave from the ward, and
you creep back down to streets

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with wide lots between homes.

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When that rare
tourist comes, you

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tell him you're not forlorn.

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There are advantages here.

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Easy pace of day,
slow circle of sun.

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If someday a cure's announced,
for instance, the hot springs

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work, you will walk
young again in Spokane,

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find startling women.

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You wonder why you
feel empty and frown

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and why goodbyes are hard.

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You go out healthy on
the gray, thin road,

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and when you look
back, no one is waving.

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They kept no record
of your suffering,

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wouldn't know you
if you returned

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without your cane, your grin."

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I should explain,
whenever I start

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to read there's just
this kind of pall

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comes over the audience.

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And I know my poems.

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This is very heavy stuff.

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I just want to assure
you that in real life,

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I'm lots of fun not--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--not like those people
back in that church.

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So I'll be glad to talk
to you after the reading.

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But anyway, we'll make our way
through these gloomy poems.

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[LAUGHTER]