WEBVTT

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I know a lot of you
are artists, writers.

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And in the spirit
of that, I want

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to read this very particular
poem, that I originally

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wrote actually for Arizona
Commission on the Arts.

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And this is about
gathering artists.

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Don't try.

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It's hard.

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It's hard.

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It's hard.

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That's what this poem is about.

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It's called On
Gathering Artists.

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And it has an epigraph, "Who
does a job well and very well?

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These are the artists,
those curious lights.

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We are cobblers of the song and
barkers of the carnival word.

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We are tailors of the light
and framers of the earth.

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We fish among the elements
and hunt the elusive green

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in gray and blue.

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We drink forbidden waters
and eat an invisible food.

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In this time of electronic-mail
and facsimile conversation,

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we send as our voice the
poem, the bridge, the circuit,

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the cure, whose electricity is
made from dreams, whose song is

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sung in the colors
yet unnamed, drawn

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from the solitary
etudes of the soul

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and given up in
tender to the world.

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How easy to spend a
day writing a poem?

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How hard to spend a
life writing 1,000?

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A poem, a bridge, a
circuit, cures, laws, bowls,

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the warp and weave and waft
of iron and paper and light

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and salt. We labor
for a lifetime

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but take every day off.

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Who knows what to make of us?

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We are not the rib
cage but the legs.

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We are not the steering
wheel but the headlamps.

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We gather happily, if not often.

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We can't sit still.

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We hurry off.

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Goodbye to us, hello to
us, a tip of the hat to us

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as we go about the
drumming of our stars."

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