I'll start by reading a little bit from my poetry.
But I actually thought, maybe, I would
begin just by reading the poem that Tyler mentioned,
which is called "Summer Poem #3."
"In the middle of my life, I had the most marvelous piece
of luck.
I entered a hotel, and among golfers--
pregnant with beautiful minor worries--
watched the cheerleaders gallop, as James Wright said, terribly
against each other's bodies.
But, really, it was not, except for their cries of happiness,
bouncing off the mountains, surrounding us
in the middle of my life.
In the middle of my life, I felt lost and awake.
A patient who has just been told he has 50 years to live.
[LAUGHTER]
His body, a responsibility, now a machine that
must-- like an animal for some inexplicable reason--
be cared for.
Goodbye lassitude of adult childhood.
On the ocean, immense, aggregated plastic floats
towards us, and our most brilliant scientists
can only just watch it.
'Because' is such an interesting word.
We must somehow figure out how to put people in it."