This is sort of a change of pace.
It's a kind of love poem.
And it's called "A Time Past."
"The old wooden steps to the front door
where I was sitting that full morning, when you came
downstairs just awake.
And my joy at sight of you emerging into golden day.
The dew, almost frost, pulled me to my feet
to tell you how much I loved you.
Those wooden steps are gone now, decayed, replaced with granite.
Hard, gray, and handsome.
The old steps exist only in me.
My feet and thighs remember them.
And my hands still feel their splinters.
Everything else about and around that house
brings memories of others, of marriage, of my son.
And the steps, too, I recall sitting there
with my friend and her little son who died.
Or was it the second one who lived and thrived?
And sitting there in my life, alone or with my husband.
Yet that one instant, you're cheerful, unafraid,
youthful, I love you too.
The quiet broken by no bird, no cricket.
Gold leaves spinning in silence down without any breeze
to blow them is what twines itself in my head and body
with these slabs of wood that were warm, ancient,
and now wait somewhere to be burnt."
[APPLAUSE]