WEBVTT

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Two more poems from The
Storm, and then I'll

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read some poems from Striking
the Dark Air for Music.

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This first poem is about
my daughter Jennifer.

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It's called "Jennifer
by Moonlight."

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And she was about a year
and a half old, I think,

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when I wrote this.

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We were both sitting on a front
porch on a pretty dark night

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overcast.

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And we're doing our
different things which

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consisted of her crawling
around, looking for moths

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on the porch and cramming
them into her mouth

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and me feeling very
superior and sitting there

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on this porch with a
typewriter in front of me,

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almost literally
waiting for anything

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to pass by so I
could write about it,

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and realizing after a
while that she definitely

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had the advantage.

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"A cricket with a short circuit
whirrs in grass behind a stone.

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The dark electric
sound seems to shine,

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attracting our daughter with
her mouth full of moth wings,

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toward the porch edge where she
teeters on her hands and knees,

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inarticulate and stares.

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When the second cricket sizzles
like a star dunked in a dipper,

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she giggles first, then
jabbers at our moon

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perched on our forward.

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Carelessly it spills its light
like milk across the yard.

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Absorbed in what she
cannot comprehend,

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our speechless lady pouts,
vexed by this brief innocence

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of crickets singing
and the moon."

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