All right.
The next one I'm going to read to you
is called "Sunday Morning Poet."
And I know that you and your class put a lot of emphasis
on social justice and current events and current issues.
And I think what you'll see in these next few poems is
my kind of struggle with how an individual person, any of us,
can deal with these big social issues.
And this one isn't really so much
about a social issue is about how you place yourself
in the spectrum of time.
So we're here now in the year 2012.
What is that going to mean in the whole, big, universal
picture?
It's called "Sunday Morning Poet."
"If I were searching for tradition
at the turn of this new century, I
would walk to the end of my driveway
on Sunday morning in my underwear and sandals,
wincing at the chill in Winter or feeling for a still breeze
in Spring.
Stretching my calves up the hill to my doorpost,
I would tell those looking for clues to our postmodern
commonality to observe me sitting at kitchen table,
drinking coffee, eating rye toast, lightly buttered,
listening to public radio or folk or jazz or pre-game talk,
multitasking through ears never closed
and eyes not wanting to open.
I would look up at my examiner and point
to my absorption of book reviews, editorials,
and the gossip scandal news, declaring,
'Do not seek truth in history and public documents.
This is who we are.
This is all you need to know.'" So we'll come back and talk
about that.