WEBVTT

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I want to read you a poem--

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I don't read only sad poems.

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Even sometimes I can't
stand the intensity.

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Let me read you a
couple of love poems.

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Birds, photo flowers
or something.

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I don't write those kind of
poems, but I talked to my wife

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on the phone the other day
and I called her long distance

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and we were talking
and she said to me,

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said to me a very
funny thing, she said,

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you don't smile
at me very often.

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Which struck me very deeply
because I suspect she's right.

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And she deserves a smile
every now and then.

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That's a joke.

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This is called "Mission:
1 January '70."

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I wrote it in New York
after I'd left Minnesota.

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"Weeds are in her face.

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She skates in 20 below
thin air, skipping

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the risen pockets
of lake ice, moving

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with urgency in her dance.

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We have swept an
ice rink in a circle

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and wetted it down
with lake water

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from the electric pump, the
auger holes on the beach.

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A white goose is the dance
of me, the vatting ice,

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the green surface
eyes in the dance.

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For she seeks her gone
children there, in this dance.

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Goose thin, the
nostrils like stalks.

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Her sons shimmering
in the lake ice.

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Goose and crescent,
perfect, two figurines.

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In this decade, I
expect the environment

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to pull each into place as weed
banks giving cover to my goose.

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I stroke her open-ended
neck and watch the air.

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To watch my goose in
dance, to watch her fly.

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And with the breakup
ice in spring,

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to fish our children back, to
make them sing before her eyes.

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Then watch my goose, my dance,
her arching neck a crescent,

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open-ended."

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