So many thanks to Gail Browne, to Cybele,
to the Poetry Center, to this incredible jewel
that you have here, to Jane Miller, to Alison Deming,
to all of you for being here, and for your love of poetry.
And to Melissa for taking me to the Desert Museum again, today.
"The Decameron."
"Don't think in sleep I am absent in this repeating night
as in names, oh, nothing to me.
Don't think I am ready to be skeletal age glued to my neck,
but what am I here blind to, for I am always
blind to something i.e.
everything we see is made up of 90 chemical elements tunneling
through the energy barrier.
And a blue square applied to the body of the Earth.
And if they said here, live here, 6 billion of you,
and we did.
Ready to smile in the morning and shed tears
at night, and tomorrow, and in the evening, and the next day,
again.
At the dark and keyless light, shapely galaxies, smoky
galleons monkey around.
I'm standing close to Earth's surface
studying the nighttime sky without the aid of science.
To the fireball that started off the universe
some 15 billion years ago, hello,
from us with origins in dust."