WEBVTT

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It's a poem I wrote for my--

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it's a love poem.

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It's called "A Swarm of Dawns,
A Flock of Restless Noons."

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"There's a lot to be written
in the Book of Errors.

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The elderly redactor is blind,
for all practical purposes.

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He has no imagination,
and field mice

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have gnawed away his source
text for their nesting.

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I loved you first,
I think, when you

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stood in the kitchen sunlight
and the lazy motes of summer

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dust while I sliced a
nectarine for Moroccan

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salad, and the seven league
boots of your private grief.

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Maybe the syntax is a
little haywire there.

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Left to itself, wire must act
like Paul Klee with a pencil.

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Hay is the Old English
word for strike.

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You strike down grass, I
guess, when it is moan.

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Mown.

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The field grand mice devastated
the monastery garden maybe

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because it was summer and the
dusks were full of marsh hawks,

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and the nights were
soft with owls,

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they couldn't leave
the herbs alone--

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gnawing the roots of rosemary,
nibbling at sage and oregano

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and lemon thyme.

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It's too bad eglantine
isn't an herb

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because it's a word
I'd like to use here.

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Your coloring was a
hybrid of rubbed amber

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and a little flare of dawn rose
in the kernel of an almond.

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It's a wonder to me
that I have fingertips.

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The knife was very sharp.

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The scented rose-orange
moons, quarter moons of fruit

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fell to the cutting
board so neatly, it

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was as if two people
lived in separate cities,

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and walked to their respective
bakeries in the rain.

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Your bakery smelled
better than mine.

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The sour cloud of yeast from
sourdough hung in the air

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like the odor of creation.

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They both bought sliced
loaves, they both walked home,

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they both tripped in the entry
to their separate kitchens,

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and the spilled slices
made the exact same pattern

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on the floor.

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The nectarines smelled
like the Book of Luck.

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There was a small fog
off the bay at dawn

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in which the waning
moon swam lamps.

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The Miwoks called it Moon
of the Only Credit Card.

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I would have given my fingertips
to touch your cheekbone,

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and I did.

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The old monk knocked
off early that night.

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He was making it all
up anyway, and he'd

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had a bit of raisin
wine at vespers."

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