WEBVTT

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Our daughter's in the audience.

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And I never would have
finished this poem

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if it wasn't for, as they
say, her encouragement.

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It's called "February,
The Boy Breughel."

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My daughter was in the audience.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She's now joined us in here.

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It's called-- I'm
a minister's kid,

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and I always used to
try and distract him out

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in the congregation.

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This is the first
time she's ever--

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this is the first time Jody
and I have read together.

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And this is the first time,
she's ever seen us read.

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"February, The Boy Breughel"

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"The birches stand
in their beggars row.

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Each poor tree has had
its wrists nearly torn

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from their clear
sleeves of bone.

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These icy trees are
hanging by their thumbs

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under a sun that will
begin to heal them soon.

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Each will climb out of
its own blue oval mouth.

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The river groans.

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Two birds call out
from the woods,

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and a fox crosses through snow,
down a hill, then he runs.

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He has overcome something
white beside a white bush.

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He shakes it twice, and
as he turns for the woods,

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the blood on the snow looks
like the red fox at a distance,

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running down the hill, a
white rabbit in his mouth,

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killed by the fox in snow,
is killed over and over,

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as just two colors
now on a winter hill.

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Two colors, red and
white, a barber's bowl,

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two colors like the
peppers in the windows

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of the town below the hill.

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Smoke comes from the chimneys.

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Everything is still.

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Ice in the river begins
to move, and a boy

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in a red shirt, who
woke a moment ago

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watches from his
window the street,

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where an ox who's
broken out of his hut

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stands in the
fresh snow, staring

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cross-eyed at the boy,
who smiles and looks out

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across the roof to the hill.

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And the sun is reaching
down into the woods,

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where the smoky
red fox still eats

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his kill, two colors, just two
colors, a sunrise, the snow."

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[APPLAUSE]

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