WEBVTT

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''Monomoy'', which is
the title of this poem.

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Monomoy is a, I guess
it's an island now.

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It used to be a Peninsula
off of Massachusetts

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but then a storm came through
and made it an island.

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Not that-- I just
did the thing I

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hate at readings where people
make an explanation that,

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who cares?

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It's not important
for the poem but it's

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nice to know that that's
the setting, perhaps.

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All right.

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''Monomoy''.

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''Somewhere people must still
do things like fetch water from

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wells and buckets, then pour
it out for those animals,

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that long domesticated, would
likely perish before figuring

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out how to get for themselves.

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That dog, for example, whose
refusal to leave my side

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I mistook as a
child for loyalty,

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when all along it
was just blind.

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What is it about vulnerability
that can make the hand

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draw back sometimes?

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And can sometimes seem
the catalyst for rendering

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the hand into sheer force?

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Destructive.

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Don't you see how
you've burnt almost all

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of it, all the tenderness away.

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Someone screams to
someone else in public.

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And looking elsewhere,
we walk quickly past,

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as if even to have heard
that much might have put us

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at risk of whatever
fate questions like

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that can spring from.

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Estrangement, like sacrifice,
begins as a word at first.

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Soon it's the stuff of drama.

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Cue the follow up tears
that attend drama.

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Then it's pretty
much the difference

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between waking up to a storm
and waking up inside one.

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Who can say how she got there?

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In the ocean, I mean.

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But I once watched
a horse make her way

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back to land mid hurricane.

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Having ridden surfer-like the
very waves that at any moment

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could have overwhelmed her
in their crash to shore.

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She shook herself,
looked back once

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on the water's restlessness.

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History is always restless.

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And the horse stepped free''.

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Lucky horse.