This is humbling.
And I want to make sure that I begin with two poems that
come out of that experience of being a poet in the schools.
These are my two favorite all-time love poems.
And they were written in the 1970s by two seventh graders,
in Eloy, Arizona-- an unlikely place.
I don't remember their names, I am so sorry to say.
But the poems have stayed with me,
and I'm going to repeat them tonight.
They're very short.
You will get the exercise.
They were writing about things that mattered to them
by looking somewhere else.
Young man in that class--
he was in love with somebody who was not in love with him.
It was an unrequited love.
She sat somewhere in his vicinity.
He could not say her name.
And in the 1970s, he said the best thing he could for her.
This won't cause a ripple at all today,
but he called her Ms. X. Ms. was new to the world,
and a seventh grader using that was hot.
[LAUGHTER]
He called her Ms. X, and this was the poem.
"Ms. X, you are Central Missouri.
I was born there, I grew up there, I had my horse there,
and I want to go back."
I want to be somebody's Central Missouri.
[LAUGHTER]