And I want to say thanks to all of Dad's friends who are here.
There are quite a few of you who were just really amazing to him
and he loved you very much.
He could be a strangely challenging human being.
But he was so funny and brilliant and so much missed.
So I'm going to close with the poem
that I wrote for the dedication of the Poetry Center.
And it's hanging in the little guesthouse.
And I just saw it over there and in a broadside
that I gave to the Poetry Center.
And I want to thank Gail Browne for her amazing work
that she did while she was getting this building
to happen.
So this is called To A Desert Poet,
and it's in four little short parts.
So thank you for your attention tonight.
I'm going to answer a few questions
and I'll sign some books.
And when I answer the questions we'll turn the camera
off so I can say anything--
[LAUGHTER]
That you want to ask.
To A Desert Poet.
You traveled, your mindset forward slightly like
your father's watch.
You went toward the blurred edges
to make a skin of now, of later.
The place of origins included dust that spoke,
the particle spirits, a hawk with a droplet of blood,
an armored road.
Ancestors looked on.
You etched letters with a stick, making
matter of the beautiful and the felt. A divination.
The first cemetery was lawless.
You had to invent water to pull meaning from form.
A darkness between rhythms and always at the edge of noon
in pale pavilions and ramadas of straw.
Your practice coated in shadow.
The sweet promise of a visitor's well.
Remember the dream of the little owl?
It came willingly to your hands and everything quivered around
where it flew in.
Three.
Your loved ones gather strength after an illness.
They put their heads against the ears.
They hear the molecular rattle of the mesquite
and finding bin of syllables.
Their mother's unchanging breath.
They ask what is possible given the wretched governments
of Earth.
A poem can't do much, but it gives off sparks
from its wheels, the bristle and the clicks, mostly
at moments of resistance.
Four.
And when you went out in the world
after the long disease of yourself
and saw the colors of the world right before they arrive.
The dulls and browns of the absolute season.
Mauves streaming in the waters of a year.
You knew the features of a world are the same
as the language of the soul.
And by traveling in those elements, you'd lose your fear.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]