So I'm going to read two more poems.
And where are we?
Think it's OK.
So one is for my dad.
And as some of you knew him you know
that he helped with some of the work of this place.
And I'm very proud of that fact.
Even though I teach at a competing program, St. Mary's.
[LAUGHTER]
Which I will say is a great program.
No.
I do love that you have a Poetry Center so much
and the program here.
And I think you're very lucky to have each other.
So this was when my dad had his heart surgery.
And the first poem I read was about his sleeping
under the new big scar like America.
And so this was before the big scar.
And he was in intensive care and he asked
if I would write him a poem.
And I said, well Dad, give me the first line.
And he said, what is the meaning of all this.
[LAUGHTER]
So I wrote the poem from that.
Till It Finishes What It Does.
Where is the meaning?
The old man asked.
The night nurse had put on his little frowning socks.
He lay on his life bed in the dusk,
holding the tail of a comet.
Outside the hospital creosote.
The cactus wren is such a good packer.
Granite wild at the hands of quartz
rose in the saddle of the mountains.
I'm writing this with a pharmaceutical pen
at the nexus of science and magic.
When all the visitors had left the room,
the tiny valve of the pig beat inside our father's heart
like the spokes of the sun disk in a hieroglyph
above the squiggly river symbol like meaning
and its tributaries, nothingness and art.
Active one, the animal is not your emissary.
It is not the decoration you saw it.
Its beauty runs without your will.
It drives the mystical heart.