WEBVTT

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This next poem is called
"Lady in a Distant Face."

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And it's a poem about a lady
that my wife and I have--

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she teaches at Montana.

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And my wife and I went to
visit her one Sunday afternoon.

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And we started drinking scotch.

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It was very early,
and I hate scotch,

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but by the end of the night
I developed a terrific taste

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for it.

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But during the
course of all this

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we learned a lot about her, and
she had had quite a sad career.

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She hated Montana.

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She hated Missoula because she
felt that it was so enclosed.

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It was claustrophobic because
it's surrounded by mountains.

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And so her best time, her good
times, had been in France.

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She'd spent a few
years in France.

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And this was the high
point of her life.

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And when we went home a few
days later I wrote this poem.

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The odd way you comb your hair.

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Those big hands drawing
circles in a room

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and the Mormon background.

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You become the Sunday
all day scotch friend

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who needs a friend to
keep these mountains back.

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We came up country not
knowing your Paris days,

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the summer wide search for
Frenchmen with wild hair

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and eyes that made
for easy lies.

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No life is chilly
as your own when

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time makes parents
foreign, and brothers come

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to mock you when you're drunk.

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Summer was no lifetime.

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It rolled with games and play
on sand with sullen kings.

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Bikinis fit you then.

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You fit the beaches
with your famous boys.

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Life so shallow you
could end it with a kiss.

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What bird could go
alone this unnoticed?

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On those beaches did
you fly for seven years

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then drop exhausted in the sea?

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The fishermen they
know you for a fraud.

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Rescued you with words
that meant go home.

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Home.

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The steamer edged you from
that scene of what is nice.

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The Paris days of sun
and mortgaged gold.

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And now here in
these mountains that

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hold you from yourself the wind
blowing down your final face

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you tell us what we know.

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Time is clean, and
brief for girls,

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and a wild time passed
for ladies up like smoke

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in narrow wind.

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