I'm going to try and do something with my voice here.
And then yodel.
No.
[LAUGHTER]
This is a poem about my grandfather leaving.
I used to spend summers with them,
and he would take me back home and then leave.
But this is after I had kind of grown up with him,
and I went to live with my mother.
And so it was always very traumatic for me,
and I think it still is.
Partings are extremely difficult. Because of that --
the fact that I didn't have established roots, probably
most of you guys have.
And so to have somebody go out of your life again
and you go out of theirs again was extremely painful,
OK, and so if you have family, if you're lucky enough,
make sure you appreciate them.
"Points North."
Eddie Fisher at that time was, I don't
know, probably the second or third
of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands.
And everybody lost count and said, who gives a crap?
And so she went right on marrying.
Who cares?
"Sadness was Eddie Fisher crooning, "Oh, mein Papa.
To me he was so wonderful, to me he
was so good" on the battered jukebox down at the old bus
depot on the Second Street as a loudspeaker announced
departures for Santa Rosa, Tucumcari,
points east to Grants, Gallup, Flagstaff, and points west.
And then too soon, time for Grandpa
to leave after returning me to my parents.
The end of summer, the scratch recording
announcing the departure of a Greyhound boarding
for Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Watrous, Wagon Mound, Springer,
Raton.
Where grandfather would get off, walk across the tracks
and up the hill home.
Trinidad, Walsenburg, Pueblo, Denver, and points north.
All aboard, please.
Suddenly, the entire world seemed
as far away and as empty as points north."