WEBVTT

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Finally, a poem
titled, Gem Wood.

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It's dedicated to my sons,
Nathan, the older son

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and Jason, the younger son.

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Both of whom show
up in the poem.

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It mentions the Mad
River in Vermont.

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It mentions Camel's Hump,
a mountaintop in Vermont.

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And it mentions, first of all,
a gift shop item, real violation

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of nature, called gem wood.

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I don't know if it's
available here, or not.

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But it's made by
forcing dyes into trees,

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and then cutting off
round slices, bull's eye

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like pieces, which
have been colored,

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in rings, by the dyes that
were force Fed into the trees.

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And then they're shellacked and
mounted, and sold as gem wood.

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In the shops, they're
showing gem wood.

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The buffed up flakes
of dye fed pines.

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Bright, concentrics of bull's
eyes, wide eyed on the rack,

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of this newest joint
effort of man and nature.

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But then, those lifelines
circling each target chip

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of gem wood, look less
like eyes, yours or mine,

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when we have watched a while.

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They are more like the whorls,
at the tips of our fingers,

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which no one can copy.

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Even on the photocopy Jason
made of his upraised hands palms

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down to the machine,
they do not appear.

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His hands at five years old.

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Why did we want to copy them,
and why does the gray, yet

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clear, print make me sad?

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That summer, the Mad River
followed us through Vermont.

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A lusher state than our own.

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A thunderous matinee
of late snows

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and then the peak at
Camel's Hump was bleached.

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As a yellow pear is to the
sky, that was our feeling.

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We had with us a rat from the
lab, no, a pet we'd named.

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A pure friend, who
changed our minds.

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When it rained near the whole
of the summer, in that cabin,

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Nathan made her a
social creature.

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She was all our diversion.

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And brave.

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That's why when she died,
in the heat of our car one

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accidental day,
we didn't intend,

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it hurt her master
first and most.

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Being his first loss like that.

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And the rest of our
family felt badly.

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Even to tears.

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For a heart that small.

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We buried her by the road
in the Adirondack Mountains,

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and kept our way to Iowa.

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Now it seems to
me, the heart must

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enlarge to hold the losses
we have ahead of us.

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I hold to a certain sadness
the way others search for joy.

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Though I like joy.

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Home, sunlight cleared the air.

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And all the greens
of consequence.

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Still, when it ends, we
won't remember that it ended.

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If parents must
receive the sobbing,

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that is nothing when put next
to the last crucial fact of who

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is doing the crying.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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