WEBVTT

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The next poem is called
"Permission to Speak."

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And it's dedicated to Norman
Dubie for two reasons.

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One is because reading
Norman's-- he read here a few

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weeks ago, a month ago.

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Reading his poems
really opened up

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some imaginative
possibilities in my own work.

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He made me really break
some of my own rules

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for what I thought was
acceptable or good in a poem.

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And also, the poem
was written partly

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out of a dream I had after
visiting with Norman and Jody

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in Tempe.

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Nothing else in it.

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One thing that'll
ruin the poem for you

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is that there's a mansion
near the end of it.

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I shouldn't tell this.

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But there's a mansion near the
end of the poem about a fox.

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And the Fox is a metaphor as the
fellow in the bright nightgown.

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And I got that image
from reading a WC Fields.

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That's what he called death.

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The fellow in the bright
nightgown, something like that.

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But it doesn't mean death here.

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I stole it from him.

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"Permission to Speak.

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Mornings from my
upstairs window,

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I can see a gray stand
of birch and further down

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a hickory grove than the river
that powers the mill that

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grinds flower.

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Later, I'll eat the bread.

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Last night, a spring snow
blurred the countryside.

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And for a while, I lost my way.

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I thought I saw a boy in
a Crimson bathing suit

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whirled downstream
on an inner tube.

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So I closed my eyes on
the old words for birch,

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and hickory, and snow.

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Like a novice in his
cell discovering light.

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Not the one, but another
about, which he'll

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remain silent all his life.

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I came to myself at the window.

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That boy already seen in memory
gives me permission to speak.

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After a spring snow, a father
and son took a sleigh ride

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along the riverbank.

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And what the sun couldn't see
the particular hills and trees

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lost to whiteness made him cry.

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The father snapped
the reins and pointed

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out what must have been a
red fox sliding past a birch.

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Look at that fellow in
the bright nightgown

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from which the sun will date
his love of the world traveling

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swiftly past."

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