Thank you.
That was a great introduction and I'm honored to be here.
I was thinking back to the last time I was here.
Was about two years ago when my daughter
graduated from the U of A with her Bachelor's Degree
in archaeology.
So I like this place in that sense too.
And thanks too to Gail and the Poetry Center for having me
here.
I'm going to begin with the beginning of my work
and read just a couple of poems from my first book, The Ripped
Out Seam.
This experience, "The Bat in the Jar"
actually occurred when I was working at a local motel.
Someone caught a bat in a jar, and as I watched the bat
in the jar, I realized that the bat was dying of its own sonar.
That as it turned it was trying to get its bearings,
and its own sound was coming back to it
and making it physically ill, to the point of dying.
"Bat In A Jar".
"The jar was a Mason jar, made to preserve apricots and stone
cherries, and to withstand the extremes of cold air
and hot water baths where the steam rising lifts the canner's
black lid, only to drop it hissing again.
And the bat trapped inside knew, if it knew anything,
it would never escape.
Though the sky kept humming with insects, and the orchards
darkened as usual, apparently the same.
Someone had put the bat in a jar to avoid bites and disease,
or to protect the bat itself from house cats and dogs.
In any case, the bat kept calling for rescue,
measuring what confined it, trying to scale the horizon,
that sky of glass.
But though the bats ear shaped themselves
to the echo, though the echo filled the glass,
the jar parodied the bats longing
and gave back nothing of itself.
Mirrored?
Only the bat was mirrored, its fear inaudible
except to itself, confined to its own mind.
That which enabled the bat to select a mosquito
or to nip a June beetle out of the air now sickened it.
Open mouthed, wings beating hopefully,
hopelessly, the bat lifted its wing
like one seamless membrane, and again and again tried
to answer."