WEBVTT

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I have a friend who is
an old college friend,

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and in college, he
lived in Vermont.

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He still lives there, and
I lived then and still live

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in and around New York.

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And so we used to visit
each other some weekends

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and kind of trade lore.

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And so I would go to the
country for a weekend to Vermont

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and he'd teach me country
things like hunting and fishing,

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and then he'd come
down to New York

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and I'd teach him sort of
city things like drinking

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and smoking.

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[LAUGHTER]

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In that way, we
traded what we knew.

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And this poem is about something
he taught me about the country.

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And it's called "The Country."

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"I wondered about you
when you told me never

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to leave a box of wooden
strike-anywhere matches lying

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around the house because
the mice might get into them

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and start a fire.

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But your face was
absolutely straight

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when you twisted the
lid down on the round

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tin where the matches, you
said, are always stowed.

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Who could sleep that night?

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Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse,

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padding along a cold water pipe
behind the floral wallpaper,

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gripping a single wooden
match between the needles

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of his teeth?

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Who could not see him rounding a
corner, the blue tip scratching

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against a rough-hewn
beam, the sudden flare,

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and the creature for one
bright, shining moment suddenly

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thrust ahead of his time,
now a fire starter, now

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a torch bearer in a
forgotten ritual, little

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brown druid illuminating
some ancient night?

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Who could fail to notice, lit
up in the blazing insulation,

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the tiny looks of wonderment
on the faces of his fellow

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mice, one-time
inhabitants of what once

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was your house in the country?"

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.