The next poem is called "Permission to Speak."
And it's dedicated to Norman Dubie for two reasons.
One is because reading Norman's-- he read here a few
weeks ago, a month ago.
Reading his poems really opened up
some imaginative possibilities in my own work.
He made me really break some of my own rules
for what I thought was acceptable or good in a poem.
And also, the poem was written partly
out of a dream I had after visiting with Norman and Jody
in Tempe.
Nothing else in it.
One thing that'll ruin the poem for you
is that there's a mansion near the end of it.
I shouldn't tell this.
But there's a mansion near the end of the poem about a fox.
And the Fox is a metaphor as the fellow in the bright nightgown.
And I got that image from reading a WC Fields.
That's what he called death.
The fellow in the bright nightgown, something like that.
But it doesn't mean death here.
I stole it from him.
"Permission to Speak.
Mornings from my upstairs window,
I can see a gray stand of birch and further down
a hickory grove than the river that powers the mill that
grinds flower.
Later, I'll eat the bread.
Last night, a spring snow blurred the countryside.
And for a while, I lost my way.
I thought I saw a boy in a Crimson bathing suit
whirled downstream on an inner tube.
So I closed my eyes on the old words for birch,
and hickory, and snow.
Like a novice in his cell discovering light.
Not the one, but another about, which he'll
remain silent all his life.
I came to myself at the window.
That boy already seen in memory gives me permission to speak.
After a spring snow, a father and son took a sleigh ride
along the riverbank.
And what the sun couldn't see the particular hills and trees
lost to whiteness made him cry.
The father snapped the reins and pointed
out what must have been a red fox sliding past a birch.
Look at that fellow in the bright nightgown
from which the sun will date his love of the world traveling
swiftly past."