This last poem is a love poem.
It's a sort of middle aged love poem.
And it's about life coming to our house
after I've been running and then shoveling the walk.
It's called "A Winter's Tale."
It's the last thing I'll read.
"A Winter's Tale."
"How did I lose and find my life?
The stars have their homes.
The moon needs no country.
And the snow distilling its icy existence
to a moment on my palm fears no vanishing,
but falls and falls in its dreaming and real existence.
So, I stand in my yard staring up at the window
where your face might appear, calling me in, bathed
in the sweat of my running mile after mile up
the river in search of the body that leaves me no wisdom
but only the soft flaking and fattening of a soul past 40.
If I were a young lover, I would fly like a sprite
up to that window, scraping to be let in,
calling your name like a wound in my side,
and only your touch, like a preacher electrified
with the godhead, lightening the believer,
fainting him back to earth, might
conjure a salve to the slashing you've left me to hold.
But I'm no longer 20.
I'm only scooping snow from the walk, not bleeding in the cold.
And that same sweet light up there stays in these moments
where your face won't appear, as you know already what
I'll do moments from now, open the door
and walk as I have half my life, back into yours."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]