WEBVTT

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I see these poems, little things
on the page coming before me.

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And I thought of this
before I started tonight.

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I saw that there were
many people here.

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And I usually don't
feel dithering about it.

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It wasn't that exactly.

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But I thought, well,
these things already

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concocted be all right.

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They're often like
something that you just

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say through starting
and just following on.

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They're like telling
a person something.

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Every now and then,
I thought wistfully,

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I wonder how much
of a prize they're

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giving for a bicentennial
poem or something like that.

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I thought of doing
something big.

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This is called "At This
Point On The Page."

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Frightened at the
slope of the writing,

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I looked up at the student
who shared it with me.

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Such pain was in the
crossing of each T,

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and a heart that skipped,
lurched in the loop of the Y.

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Sorrowing for the huddled lines,
my eyes had seen the terror

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of those O's and A's
and those draggled G's.

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I looked up at her
face, not wanting

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to read father,
at least by prose.

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The hand shook that wrote
that far on the page.

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And what weight
formed each letter?

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God knows.

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I remember meeting
someone who told me--

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this was a teacher at our school
whose father was a doctor.

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And this person said they
can tell by your handwriting

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whether you've had a heart
attack or something like that.

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And I listen to these
things, and I'm interested.

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And then she went on.

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And she said, and they say
they can tell by your writing

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if you're going to
have a heart attack.

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I was even more interested.

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And my own writing
looks as if I've

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had recurrent heart attacks.

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So-- I was thinking about this.

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And the student brought a
paper in and gave it to me.

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And students often say that this
is something I wrote last night

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and I thought it was great,
but I looked at it this morning

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and I saw it's no good.

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So I'm bringing it to you.

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This is usually [INAUDIBLE]
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

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But you look at it.

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And somehow, just
looking at that

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made me think of all kinds of
things, and hence this poem--

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"At This Point On the Page."

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