Finally, a poem titled, Gem Wood.
It's dedicated to my sons, Nathan, the older son
and Jason, the younger son.
Both of whom show up in the poem.
It mentions the Mad River in Vermont.
It mentions Camel's Hump, a mountaintop in Vermont.
And it mentions, first of all, a gift shop item, real violation
of nature, called gem wood.
I don't know if it's available here, or not.
But it's made by forcing dyes into trees,
and then cutting off round slices, bull's eye
like pieces, which have been colored,
in rings, by the dyes that were force Fed into the trees.
And then they're shellacked and mounted, and sold as gem wood.
In the shops, they're showing gem wood.
The buffed up flakes of dye fed pines.
Bright, concentrics of bull's eyes, wide eyed on the rack,
of this newest joint effort of man and nature.
But then, those lifelines circling each target chip
of gem wood, look less like eyes, yours or mine,
when we have watched a while.
They are more like the whorls, at the tips of our fingers,
which no one can copy.
Even on the photocopy Jason made of his upraised hands palms
down to the machine, they do not appear.
His hands at five years old.
Why did we want to copy them, and why does the gray, yet
clear, print make me sad?
That summer, the Mad River followed us through Vermont.
A lusher state than our own.
A thunderous matinee of late snows
and then the peak at Camel's Hump was bleached.
As a yellow pear is to the sky, that was our feeling.
We had with us a rat from the lab, no, a pet we'd named.
A pure friend, who changed our minds.
When it rained near the whole of the summer, in that cabin,
Nathan made her a social creature.
She was all our diversion.
And brave.
That's why when she died, in the heat of our car one
accidental day, we didn't intend,
it hurt her master first and most.
Being his first loss like that.
And the rest of our family felt badly.
Even to tears.
For a heart that small.
We buried her by the road in the Adirondack Mountains,
and kept our way to Iowa.
Now it seems to me, the heart must
enlarge to hold the losses we have ahead of us.
I hold to a certain sadness the way others search for joy.
Though I like joy.
Home, sunlight cleared the air.
And all the greens of consequence.
Still, when it ends, we won't remember that it ended.
If parents must receive the sobbing,
that is nothing when put next to the last crucial fact of who
is doing the crying.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]