WEBVTT

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And I'm going to read
you one more poem.

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It's called "Catalog of
Unabashed Gratitude."

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It takes 10 minutes to read.

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Which means it takes 10
minutes for you to hear it.

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So if you need to shift, shift.

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[LAUGHTER]

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There's two things about this
poem that I want to tell you.

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One is that part of it,
it starts in a dream,

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but then the second part
it goes to this community

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orchard in Bloomington, called
the Bloomington Community

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Orchard.

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Which is this sort of
experiment in a neighborliness.

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An experiment in caring for
people you may not know.

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There's 100 trees, there's
100 or more fruit bushes,

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there's all kinds of
complimentary plants,

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but there's this
place where we have

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decided to try to figure out
how to grow food for each other.

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And to have the conversations
about growing food, which

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are really conversations about
taking care of each other.

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That's in Bloomington.

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Come Please come.

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And the other thing
is that there's

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this kid who was not yet a
kid in this poem named Aralee.

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Aralee was the idea of a kid.

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And now Aralee is like a
three 3 and 1/2 year old kid.

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"Catalog of
Unabashed Gratitude."

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I'm very glad to be here,
feel lucky to do this today.

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Friends, will you
bear with me today,

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for I have awakened from a
dream in which a robin made

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with its shabby wings a kind of
veil, behind which it shimmied

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and stopped something
from the south of Spain,

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Its breast a flare,
looking me dead in the eye

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from the branch that
grew into my window,

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coochie-cooing my chin.

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The bird shuffling
its little talons

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left, then right,
while the leaves

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bristle against the plaster
wall, Two of them drifting

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onto my blanket while the
bird opened and closed

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its wings like a matador
giving up on murder.

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Jutting its beak, turning
a circle, and flashing,

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again, the ruddy
bombast of its breast,

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by which I knew upon
waking it was telling me

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in no uncertain
terms to bellow forth

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the tubas and sousaphones.

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The whole rusty brass
band of gratitude

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not quite dormant in my belly.

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It said so in a human voice.

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Below forth.

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And who among us could ignore
such odd and precise counsel?

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Hear ye!

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Hear ye!

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I am here to holler
that I have hauled tons.

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By which I don't mean lots
I mean, tons of cowshit.

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And stood ankle deep
in swales of maggots

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swirling the spent beer
grains, the brewery man

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was good enough to dump
off holding his nose

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for they smell very bad.

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But make the
compost writhe giddy

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and lick its lips, twirling
dung with my pitchfork,

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again and again.

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With hundreds and
hundreds of other people,

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we dreamt an orchard this way.

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Furrowing our brows, and
hauling our wheelbarrows,

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and sweating through our shirts,
and less than a year later

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there was a party,
at which trees

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were sunk into the well-fed
earth, one of which

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a liberty apple,
after being watered in

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was tamped by a baby, barefoot
with a bow hanging in her hair,

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biting her lip in
her joyous work.

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And friends, this is the
realest place I know.

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It makes me squirm like a worm.

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I am so grateful.

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You could ride your bike
there, or roller skate,

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or catch the bus.

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There is a fence and a
gate twisted by hand.

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There is a fig tree taller
than you in Indiana.

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It will make you gasp.

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It might make you want to
stay alive even, thank you.

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And thank you for not taking my
pal when the engine of his mind

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dragged him to swig fistfuls
of Xanax and a bottle

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or two of booze.

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And thank you for
taking my father

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a few years after his
own father went down.

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Thank you, Mercy.

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Mercy, thank you, for not
smoking meth with your mother.

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Both, thank you.

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Thank you for leaving
and for coming back.

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And thank you for what
inside my friends.

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Love bursts like a
throng of roadside

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goldenrod gleaming
into the world.

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Likely, hauling a
shovel with her like one

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named Aralee ought.

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With hands big as a horses
and who like one named

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Aralee ought.

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Will laugh time to time til
the juice runs from her nose.

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Oh, thank you for the
way a small thing's wail,

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makes the milk or
what once was milk

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in us gather into horses
huckle-buckling across a field.

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And thank you, friends.

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When last spring, the hyacinth
bells rang, and the crocuses

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flaunted their upturned
skirts, and a quiet

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roved the beehive,
which when I entered

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were snugged two or three dead
fist-sized clutches of bees

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between the frames almost
clinging to one another.

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This one's tiny head pushed
into another's tiny wing.

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One's forelegs resting
on another's face.

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The translucent
paper of their wings

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fluttering beneath my breath.

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And when a few dropped to
the frames beneath, honey.

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And after falling down to cry,
everything's glacial shine.

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And thank you too.

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And thanks for the corduroy
couch I have put you on.

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Put your feet up.

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Here's a light blanket.

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That would be really nice today.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Here's a light blanket,
a pillow, dear ones,

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for I think this is
going to be long.

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I can't stop my gratitude,
which includes, dear reader,

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you, for staying here with me.

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For moving your lips
just so as I speak.

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Here is a cup of tea.

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I've spooned honey into it.

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And thank you, the tiny bee
shadow perusing these words

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as I write them.

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And the way my love talks
quietly within the hive.

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So quietly, in fact, you cannot
hear her but only notice barely

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her lips moving in conversation.

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Thank you, what does
not scare her in me,

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but makes her reach my way.

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Thank you, the love she
is which hurts sometimes.

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And the time she misremembered
elephants on one of my poems.

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Which, oh, here they come.

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Garlanded with morning
glory and wisteria blooms

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trombones all the way
down to the river.

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Thank you the quiet in
which the river bends around

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the elephant's solemn trunk,
polishing stones, floating

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on its gentle back, the flock
of geese flying overhead.

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And to the quick and
gentle flocking of men

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to the old lady falling down
on the corner of Fairmount

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and 18th.

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Holding patiently
with the softest parts

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of their hands, her
cane, and purple hat,

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gathering for her the
contents of her purse

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and touching her
shoulder and elbow.

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And thank you to the
cock-eyed basketball court

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on which in the
half-court three on three

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we oldheads made of some
runny-nose kids a shambles.

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And the 61-year-old after
flipping a reverse lay-up

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off a backdoor cut from my
no-look pass to seal the game,

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ripped off his shirt and
threw punches at the gods,

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and hollered at the kids to
admire the pacemaker's scar

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grinning across his chest.

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Thank you the glad accordion's
wheeze in the chest.

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Thank you, the bagpipes

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Thank you to the woman barefoot
in a gaudy dress for stopping

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her car in the
middle of the road,

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and the tractor trailer behind
her, and the van behind it,

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whisking a turtle off the road.

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Thank you, god of gaudy.

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Thank you, paisley panties.

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Thank you, the
organ up my dress.

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Thank you the sheer
dress you wore

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kneeling in my dream
at the creek's edge

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and the light
swimming through it.

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The koi kissing halos
into the glassy air.

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The room in my mind
with the blinds

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drawn where we nearly
injure each other crawling

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into the shawl of
the other's body.

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Oh thank you, when
I just say it plain.

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We fuck each other dumb.

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And you.

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Again, you for the
true kindness it

00:09:08.430 --> 00:09:11.670 align:middle line:84%
has been for you to remain
awake with me like this.

00:09:11.670 --> 00:09:15.000 align:middle line:84%
Nodding time to time and
making that noise, which

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I take to mean yes,
or I understand,

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or please go on
but not too long.

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Or why are you spitting so much?

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Or easy, Tiger,
hands to yourself.

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I'm excitable.

00:09:30.240 --> 00:09:32.250 align:middle line:90%
I'm sorry.

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I'm grateful.

00:09:34.230 --> 00:09:37.960 align:middle line:84%
I just want us to be
friends now forever.

00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:40.720 align:middle line:84%
Take this bowl of
blackberries from the garden.

00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:42.790 align:middle line:90%
The sun has made them warm.

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I picked them just for you.

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I promise I will try to stay
on my side of the couch.

00:09:49.720 --> 00:09:53.470 align:middle line:84%
And thank you the baggie of
dreadlocks I found in a drawer

00:09:53.470 --> 00:09:57.380 align:middle line:84%
while washing and folding the
clothes of our murdered friend.

00:09:57.380 --> 00:10:00.740 align:middle line:84%
The photo in which his
arm slung around the sign

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to the trail of silences.

00:10:03.320 --> 00:10:05.360 align:middle line:84%
Thank you, the
way before he died

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he held his hands open to us.

00:10:08.210 --> 00:10:10.790 align:middle line:84%
For coming back in
a raft of incense

00:10:10.790 --> 00:10:13.790 align:middle line:84%
or in the shape of a boy
in another city looking

00:10:13.790 --> 00:10:16.220 align:middle line:90%
from between his mother's legs.

00:10:16.220 --> 00:10:19.760 align:middle line:84%
Or disappearing into the
stacks after brushing by.

00:10:19.760 --> 00:10:24.380 align:middle line:84%
For moseying back in dreams
where seeing us lost and scared

00:10:24.380 --> 00:10:27.260 align:middle line:84%
he put his hand on our
shoulders and pointed us

00:10:27.260 --> 00:10:30.880 align:middle line:90%
to the temple across town.

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And thank you to the
man all night long,

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hosing a mist on his
early bloom the peach tree

00:10:36.640 --> 00:10:39.910 align:middle line:84%
so that the hard frost
not waste the crop.

00:10:39.910 --> 00:10:42.270 align:middle line:84%
The ice in his
beard and the ghosts

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slitheen from him when the
warming sun told him sleep now.

00:10:46.630 --> 00:10:49.630 align:middle line:84%
Thank you, the ancestor
who loved you before she

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knew you by smuggling seeds into
her braid for the long journey.

00:10:54.010 --> 00:10:55.960 align:middle line:84%
Who loved you before
he knew you by putting

00:10:55.960 --> 00:10:57.880 align:middle line:90%
a walnut tree in the ground.

00:10:57.880 --> 00:10:59.290 align:middle line:84%
Who loved you
before she knew you

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by not slaughtering the land.

00:11:01.330 --> 00:11:04.900 align:middle line:84%
Thank you who did not bulldoze
the ancient grove of dates

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and olives.

00:11:05.740 --> 00:11:09.730 align:middle line:84%
Who sailed his keys into the
ocean and walked softly home.

00:11:09.730 --> 00:11:11.320 align:middle line:90%
Who did not fire.

00:11:11.320 --> 00:11:13.570 align:middle line:84%
Who did not plunge the
head into the toilet.

00:11:13.570 --> 00:11:15.970 align:middle line:90%
Who said stop, don't do that.

00:11:15.970 --> 00:11:18.490 align:middle line:84%
Who lifted some
broken someone up.

00:11:18.490 --> 00:11:22.540 align:middle line:84%
Who volunteered, the way a plant
birthed of the reseeding plant

00:11:22.540 --> 00:11:24.370 align:middle line:90%
is called a volunteer.

00:11:24.370 --> 00:11:26.920 align:middle line:84%
Like the plum tree that
marched beside the raised bed

00:11:26.920 --> 00:11:27.828 align:middle line:90%
in my garden.

00:11:27.828 --> 00:11:30.370 align:middle line:84%
Like the arugula that marched
itself between the blueberries,

00:11:30.370 --> 00:11:34.240 align:middle line:84%
nary a bayonet, nary
an army, nary a nation.

00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:37.120 align:middle line:84%
Which usage of the word
volunteer familiar to gardeners

00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:41.020 align:middle line:84%
the wide world made my pals
shout, oh, and dance and punch

00:11:41.020 --> 00:11:43.690 align:middle line:84%
his knuckles into the
lush soil before gobbling

00:11:43.690 --> 00:11:45.610 align:middle line:84%
two strawberries
and digging a song

00:11:45.610 --> 00:11:47.770 align:middle line:84%
from his guitar made of
wood from a tree someone

00:11:47.770 --> 00:11:48.550 align:middle line:90%
may be planted.

00:11:48.550 --> 00:11:49.300 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:11:49.300 --> 00:11:51.640 align:middle line:84%
Thank you zinnia, and
gooseberry, redbeckia

00:11:51.640 --> 00:11:55.150 align:middle line:84%
and pawpaw, ashmead's kernel,
cockscomb, and scarlet runner,

00:11:55.150 --> 00:11:56.560 align:middle line:90%
feverfew, and lemonbalm.

00:11:56.560 --> 00:11:58.090 align:middle line:84%
Thank you knitbone,
and sweetgrass,

00:11:58.090 --> 00:12:01.840 align:middle line:84%
and sunchoke and false indigo,
whose petals stammered apart

00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:02.890 align:middle line:90%
by bumblebees.

00:12:02.890 --> 00:12:04.890 align:middle line:84%
Good Lord, please
give me a minute.

00:12:04.890 --> 00:12:09.510 align:middle line:90%


00:12:09.510 --> 00:12:11.760 align:middle line:84%
And moonglow, and
catkin, and crookneck,

00:12:11.760 --> 00:12:14.630 align:middle line:84%
and painted tongue, and
seedpods, and Johnny jump-up.

00:12:14.630 --> 00:12:15.130 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:12:15.130 --> 00:12:18.420 align:middle line:84%
What in us rackets glad,
what glad rackets us.

00:12:18.420 --> 00:12:21.540 align:middle line:84%
And thank you too, this
knuckleheaded heart,

00:12:21.540 --> 00:12:24.720 align:middle line:84%
this pelican heart, this
gap-toothed heart flinging

00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.060 align:middle line:90%
open its gaudy maw to the sky.

00:12:27.060 --> 00:12:31.260 align:middle line:84%
Oh clumsy, oh bumblefucked,
oh giddy, oh dumbstruck,

00:12:31.260 --> 00:12:34.110 align:middle line:84%
oh rickshaw, oh goat
twisting its head at me

00:12:34.110 --> 00:12:36.630 align:middle line:84%
from my peach tree's
highest branch.

00:12:36.630 --> 00:12:41.580 align:middle line:84%
Balanced impossibly gobbling the
last fruit, its tongue working

00:12:41.580 --> 00:12:46.140 align:middle line:84%
like an engine alone sweet
drop tumbling by some miracle

00:12:46.140 --> 00:12:50.650 align:middle line:84%
into my mouth, like the
smell of someone I've loved.

00:12:50.650 --> 00:12:55.600 align:middle line:84%
Heart like an elephant screaming
at the bones of its dead.

00:12:55.600 --> 00:12:59.590 align:middle line:84%
Heart like the lady on the bus
dressed head to toe in gold.

00:12:59.590 --> 00:13:01.690 align:middle line:84%
The sun shivering
her shiny boots

00:13:01.690 --> 00:13:04.270 align:middle line:90%
singing Erykah Badu to herself.

00:13:04.270 --> 00:13:06.410 align:middle line:84%
Leaning her head
against the window.

00:13:06.410 --> 00:13:09.850 align:middle line:84%
And thank you the way my father
one time came back in a dream

00:13:09.850 --> 00:13:12.940 align:middle line:84%
by plucking the two cables
beneath my chin like a bass

00:13:12.940 --> 00:13:13.750 align:middle line:90%
fiddle strings.

00:13:13.750 --> 00:13:15.360 align:middle line:84%
And played me until
I woke singing,

00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:19.420 align:middle line:84%
no kidding I was smiling and
singing (SINGING) Thank you.

00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:20.710 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:13:20.710 --> 00:13:23.500 align:middle line:84%
Stumbling into the garden
with a Juneberry's flowers

00:13:23.500 --> 00:13:26.530 align:middle line:84%
that burst open like the
bells of French horns.

00:13:26.530 --> 00:13:29.800 align:middle line:84%
The Lily, my mom, and I
planted oozed into the air.

00:13:29.800 --> 00:13:33.520 align:middle line:84%
The bazillion ants labored in
their earthen workshops below.

00:13:33.520 --> 00:13:36.880 align:middle line:84%
Collard greens waved in the
wind like the sails of ships.

00:13:36.880 --> 00:13:40.450 align:middle line:84%
And the wasps swam in the
mint bloom's viscous swill.

00:13:40.450 --> 00:13:45.940 align:middle line:84%
And you, again you
friends, for hanging tight.

00:13:45.940 --> 00:13:50.100 align:middle line:90%


00:13:50.100 --> 00:13:53.700 align:middle line:84%
I know I can be
long-winded sometimes.

00:13:53.700 --> 00:13:57.720 align:middle line:84%
I just want so badly to rub
the sponges of gratitude

00:13:57.720 --> 00:14:00.790 align:middle line:90%
over everything, including you.

00:14:00.790 --> 00:14:03.470 align:middle line:90%


00:14:03.470 --> 00:14:05.810 align:middle line:90%
Which is awkward.

00:14:05.810 --> 00:14:07.940 align:middle line:90%
Yes.

00:14:07.940 --> 00:14:13.220 align:middle line:84%
A little suds going down, your
collar behind your glasses.

00:14:13.220 --> 00:14:15.970 align:middle line:90%
Soon it will be over.

00:14:15.970 --> 00:14:18.380 align:middle line:84%
Which is precisely what
the child in my dream

00:14:18.380 --> 00:14:23.000 align:middle line:84%
said, holding my hand pointing
at the roiling sea and the sky

00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.490 align:middle line:84%
hurtling our way like so
many buffalo who said,

00:14:26.490 --> 00:14:29.910 align:middle line:90%
it's much worse than we think.

00:14:29.910 --> 00:14:33.150 align:middle line:90%
And sooner.

00:14:33.150 --> 00:14:36.910 align:middle line:84%
To whom I said, no duh,
child in my dreams.

00:14:36.910 --> 00:14:40.350 align:middle line:84%
What do you think this
singing and shuddering is?

00:14:40.350 --> 00:14:42.960 align:middle line:84%
What this screaming, and
reaching, and dancing,

00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:48.540 align:middle line:84%
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away.

00:14:48.540 --> 00:14:51.280 align:middle line:90%
Goodbye, I mean to say.

00:14:51.280 --> 00:14:54.420 align:middle line:90%
And thank you every day.

00:14:54.420 --> 00:14:56.270 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:14:56.270 --> 00:14:57.000 align:middle line:90%