I've been doing I think what I would
call public poetry for a long time,
my whole professional career.
Being poet laureate is wonderful,
but I'm still the same guy.
But it's the weird thing.
I mean, I would have gone somewhere two weeks ago
and it was just me, and it was a nice visit and applause.
And now when I'm going back it's like whoa, neon
and electricity.
What did I do?
And it's not what I did.
It's what we did as a state.
It's how we've all come to this moment, how we valued it,
how we will further it.
And I'm glad to be at the front of that line.
I'm going to start by reading a public poem.
I'm going to alternate tonight.
I'm just going to read a few things.
I'm going to alternate between some public poems
and some personal poems.
I think you can have also/and.
It doesn't have to be either/or.
And this is a lesson I took from the writer
Pablo Neruda, who talked about us
having to be public servants.
Said, great writers write what they need to write,
but they also save some time and some space for those who cannot
write.
Those who have lent themselves to you,
the baker who baked a loaf of bread, and you ate it,
and you enjoyed it, but who cannot write his own or her own
poem.
If you enjoyed that bread, you will write that poem.
That's an important thing to remember
that as a public servant, it doesn't matter
if you work at the water service, light, or gas company,
or wherever, you're going to help somebody.
And I want to start by reading this particular poem which
I think is a great start for us all.
This is called, "Where the Possible is Near."
"We have arrived in our 1,000 different ways.
We will leave to our 1,000 different destinations.
But for this moment, we stand happily as one.
Let this hour be to good purpose,
that it push us in our 1,000 directions well-served full
because of this good which is simple enough.
Gathering in troubled times is a grace.
A time in which all of us are moved to go forward to do what
this day will ask of us.
I know all of you only a little, but we are not strangers.
Who wants the same things I want.
You are some part of me.
Who eats the same bread.
Who wants the good that I want.
I know you.
Do good, we say.
Champion what is right.
That is why we are here gathered to help.
Keep open the pages of a book and you will have
closed the doors of a prison.
What we do matters.
What actions we let speak for us matter.
You and I, we are cousins by intent if not family.
We are siblings by effort if not upbringing.
We are in a word, each other, all of us here today.
What remains is the covenant of a confluent moment.
An hour in which we see the possible as the near.
Close enough to make it our own."