OK.
Moving right along to the "Death's Last Spring,"
"Something More Fragile Than This."
And also, this is all the reaction to my last reading.
My last reading was Anchorage.
And Anchorage, in my hometown, I never do readings,
and my book just came out.
So I did a reading.
And my kids came in.
So of course, I couldn't read any of this stuff,
because you know?
As is myself, a parental advisory.
So.
[LAUGHING]
Here it goes.
"Something More Fragile Than This."
"Quit, before our bodies turn themselves in.
With a reverence reserved for the dead,
touch me, because I want to remember how beautiful I am.
While spring snows around us, cracking her eggs
on our windows, in her meager dress of yellowing white,
because I want to rise into today.
So why the urge to render something
more fragile than this?
Why always the soul blowing glass?
The soul, once again, filling the lungs with smoke,
because a memory of regret sweats in the plastic sleeve
of a family album.
Because there's a snapshot caught between the pages
of some thick book.
My heavy 20-year-old frame setting off the 60-pound weight
of a dying mother.
Because somewhere, there's a negative slide of my heart.
Because, and because, and because, I'm sure
there's a photo in some drawer that shows me dressed in black.
But I want to devote myself to the mystery of this afternoon.
I want to honor this falling night, worst
of the hour, vanishing between 6:00 and 7:00.
This moment where I'm standing against myself,
and against you, with a taste in my mouth
that's yolk, with Bob Marley, taking that one long
drag on the refrigerator door, with the smell of spring."