Thank you so much, Alison.
I wasn't expecting such a large turnout.
But I knew Frances would be here,
Frances Sjoberg, some of you may know.
And I would actually like to read mostly
for her because she's putting together a book.
And it gave me occasion to think about having two books
now, how one might have led to the other.
So I want to start at the tail end of Red Signature
and see if I can find some seam.
This poem is called "Among Things Held at Arm's Length."
"They planted cedars around the farmhouses
in those days, home place.
Cedars are fast growers.
And they mass.
They're thick.
Windbreak.
So when a thunderstorm would rant, and rave, and spew,
the cedars would take it, would wrestle the thing,
stop it at the windows.
The people would be lying there a yard away in nice dry bed
clothes.
The dog's eyes would be open, waiting.
And in the afternoon, which is the calm,
why then the cedars would shift a little in the breeze
and their shadows would move all dapply on the windows,
on the white windowsills.
This is a permanent thing, seen from cradles,
seen from death beds.
A woman, for example, one of whose names was Muriel,
had her window, her branch, her bird, her hour for the watch,
free because she draped the dish towel over the dishes to dry.
Free because she had a cocker spaniel pup on her lap,
his head silky to stroke free because by then, she
had mostly quit talking.
That a name means matters, what the name is doesn't or varies.
Pawnee County, Oklahoma, place shows the difference
between anywhere, which it can be, and arbitrary, which
it can't, a time all people find,
a joint time, a time certain, not known
ordinarily in advance, a time came and then Muriel died.
And when she was a bride, and even a young wife,
her red-haired husband would come in from the fields,
his energy scarcely diminished.
And he would pick her up around the waist
and whirl her around the dusty yard
till her stockings would cowl at the tops of her laced up shoes.
She would laugh and he would smile.
The first child was a daughter.
And they named her Armand, a girl
more somber than either parent, a girl with auburn hair.
Then a boy with clay red hair, Bryce, soon nicknamed Brick,
then a boy with hair the color of new penny,
Joe, then Rex with hair the color of an old penny.
Finally, a dark haired girl, hair dark
as Muriel's own, a joyous child called Claudie Ann.
And the sod buster's name, not to be omitted,
was Arnold, which only Muriel ever voiced.
To everyone else, he was Red.
His brother, whose real name, even I don't know,
was Blue, on account of his cold black hair.
The time came and the time came and the time came,
the time will come and come, and come and come
for the littlest daughter will come likewise.
With luck, a cedar branch, a wind.
With luck, a cardinal bird.
Hazel eyes or blue or brown or gray or green,
the same for one whole lifetime.
The pre-sunrise light is daily.
Today, I just happened to see it.
I aligned my palm with the horizon."
And that is, in one way, where the book ends with this figure,
who has looked back at home and becoming an adult and becoming
an artist, and now is situated with this palm aligned with
the horizon, the place where the sky and the land,
or if you happen to live on an ocean, which I don't.
Where those two things meet, it's
hard to tell where one thing becomes the other.