WEBVTT

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This is sort of
a change of pace.

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It's a kind of love poem.

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And it's called "A Time Past."

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"The old wooden steps
to the front door

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where I was sitting that
full morning, when you came

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downstairs just awake.

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And my joy at sight of you
emerging into golden day.

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The dew, almost frost,
pulled me to my feet

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to tell you how
much I loved you.

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Those wooden steps are gone now,
decayed, replaced with granite.

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Hard, gray, and handsome.

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The old steps exist only in me.

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My feet and thighs
remember them.

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And my hands still
feel their splinters.

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Everything else about
and around that house

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brings memories of others,
of marriage, of my son.

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And the steps, too, I
recall sitting there

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with my friend and her
little son who died.

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Or was it the second one
who lived and thrived?

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And sitting there in my life,
alone or with my husband.

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Yet that one instant,
you're cheerful, unafraid,

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youthful, I love you too.

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The quiet broken by
no bird, no cricket.

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Gold leaves spinning in
silence down without any breeze

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to blow them is what twines
itself in my head and body

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with these slabs of wood
that were warm, ancient,

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and now wait somewhere
to be burnt."

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[APPLAUSE]

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