WEBVTT

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I wrote a short
poem once, and I was

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so excited it's in this book.

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It's-- you will see horses
creeping in hither and yon.

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We have one now.

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I am desperately
allergic to him,

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but I love him because
my daughters do

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and I launder his saddle
pads and I haul him

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in from the field
to get his shots

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and to have his new shoes put
on and I'm very proud of myself.

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And six months
after we got him, he

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came down in the frightening
phrase of the barn

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owner, dead lame,
and had to be cared

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for through all the grueling
very, very cold Michigan winter

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months with treatments that
made that-- with to ice

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the leg to keep it from
swelling in the hopes of healing

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his lameness and
eventually it did heal,

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but there were many predawn
and after sunset therapy

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sessions out of the barn

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This poem is about that.

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My going on and on
is much, much longer

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than the poem is but the poem--

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so there's a girl
in a horse in it.

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Before my daughter's
got this horse,

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I didn't know there was the
thing with girls and horses.

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That's how unattached
I am to the world.

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But this has also in
mind another watcher,

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another triangle, which is
that enacted in Sappho's most

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famous fragment, fragment 31.

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He is more than a man
to me, He is a God he

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who sits at your right
hand and so forth.

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The title of the poem comes
from that the marvelous image

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Sappho has for desire moving
like a flame under the skin.

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It's called a narrow flame.

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It's just nine lines and some
of them are only one word

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long it's going to be like on.

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"Narrow flame."

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"Dark still 12 degrees
below freezing.

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Tremor along the elegant
injured right front

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leg of the gelding on the
cross ties kneeling girl.

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The under song of
waters as she bathes

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the leg in yet more cold
tongue is broken God to me.

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Her hair, the color
of winter wind."

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