WEBVTT

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Hi.

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I'm all emotional tonight.

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That poem almost made me cry.

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Thank you Natalie.

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And thank you also
Allison, for inviting us

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and for your generosity
and hospitality here.

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I think I'm just going to
read two of the poems that

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were published in Sing.

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And the first one I'm going
to read is about my daughter

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when she was born.

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So she's here with us tonight.

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She's my first child.

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And so when I had her, I wrote
like a million poems about her.

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And so I also thought it
would be fun to read this,

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because I began this
poem at Idlewild, which

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is where I first met Natalie.

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And it changed over time.

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But she heard my first
version, so I thought

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I would share it this evening.

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It's titled, "Dilate."

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"One-- placed on my
chest, warm, fragile.

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As the skin of nightfall, she
was heavier than I imagined.

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Her eyes untied
from northern poles,

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from hard unseen winter months.

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She arrived safely.

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Mid-spring, she scrunched her
brow and up look to her father.

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There's a turning as pupils
dilate as black vernal suns

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slip into equinox, this was.

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We never forget her first act.

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Two-- all is experienced through
the body, somebody told me.

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Three-- though I did not feel
it when the midwife invited,

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when he cut the tie, the
clean umbilical sever.

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When I smiled, I
did not feel it.

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As they took her to wash,
to weigh her, when I said,

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you should go with her.

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Both of them gone,
father and baby.

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In, the room in
warm orange light, I

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listened from behind
a clock on the wall.

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My own face, heavy plate glass.

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Though all experience
is through the body,

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I did not feel my hands
pull, white sheets, my legs

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shake when two nurses
cooed, "lean back.

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Honey, you are bleeding
more than expected.'"

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