WEBVTT

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The next is a long poem written
the time of my 80th birthday.

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And 80th birthday means that
you've lived for 80 years.

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It's not-- it's not that you're
going into your 80th year.

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You finished your 80th
year, so be sure of that.

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And I had been
asked to contribute

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to a Festschrift for the
Colorado poet Jack Collom

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for his 80th
birthday, and I guess

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probably the first
five or six poems here

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were for that occasion.

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And then I realized, well if
Jack Collom is going to be 80,

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I'm also going to be 80.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, so it took off.

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It took off from there.

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I'll read it, and then
I'll end with something

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entirely different.

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I call it a poem of miracles,
and Jack Collom for me

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was also a writer very
deeply into ecological issues

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and so forth.

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The miracle became a sense of
nothing really supernatural

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in that the--

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where we are, the miracle of
the here and now I suppose.

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And it's in--

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27 sections, short lines,
and each one as it turns out,

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they're all 14-line poems.

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Why do I tell you this?

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It's a secret I've
been keeping for years.

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If 14 lines rings
any bells for anyone,

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that's the way it worked out.

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"A Poem of Miracles."

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A miracle more
ordinary than the grass

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under our feet, the hot sun
as it dazzles eye and skin.

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So many memories
blending into one.

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We have no place to go but where
we are, no nearer to the end

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than to the source.

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A miracle open on all
sides toward which

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the mind moves slowly and
the eye is in a dream,

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opens and shuts.

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Clouds without
rain cover the sun.

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The animal that sleeps
over our skylight

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knows neither rest nor
waking, only a dream.

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Turn of the hand by which a
perfect bird comes into view

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of flight over
the heads of some,

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no mystery in what we see.

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We walk away from
it, though soon

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are gone when something ever
bright, a flash of wing,

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assails us heretofore concealed.

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The real comes first.

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The fancy, a far second hard
to tell apart, still harder

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in the dark.

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The eye too weak, the skin
still weaker like the mind.

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The origin of species
hides its birth.

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The contours of the real,
the hand feels in the eye,

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imagines only later
in singular pursuit.

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A miracle to make the seen
a forerunner of the unseen,

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the animal you see its
metamorphosis deferred.

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Imagination lurks here,
brings concealment into light.

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The world inside the
mind turned upside down.

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A miracle to live a
life in celebration,

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knowing fear and
feeling death he

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finds the poem
more to his taste.

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They call it fancy, a
game of chance or choice

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that pulls the mind
back from the literal,

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opens a door to
the imagined real.

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A miracle from which the
other miracle precedes.

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The owl living night
long in the palm tree.

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A flight of pelicans,
brown shadows east

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of where the sun
touches the ocean.

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A miracle of distant
bodies, voices from the sky

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sounds absent words.

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A miracle, the sun
crushed by its clouds.

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The mind retreats from blood
lines staining the horizon,

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raining down.

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The word is firmament.

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A cracked sky over
the sun and moon

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imagine trackers behind
which light seeps forth

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a field of stars.

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A miracle, our lives
that pass a barrier.

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The evil wind is not
so evil that brings us

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words to string into a poem.

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Nowhere to go but up and out.

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The miracle, even to know
that knowing ends having all

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tried and failed
against the odds.

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A miracle of darkness
hides the light itself.

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A miracle in which
infinity is escapist

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and we plunge on in
hot pursuit, the ocean

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capped by scarlet clouds.

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A miracle or not, the sand below
is pink or mauve or amber, open

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and shut.

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A miracle, the light a
miracle, the night a miracle,

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the sea a miracle, the tree a
miracle, the bird a miracle,

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the word a miracle, the rain a
miracle, the brain a miracle,

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the time a miracle, the rhyme a
miracle, the breath a miracle,

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the death a miracle,
the light a miracle.

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A miracle to have been here
and to vanish as the time

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ends no more real than
anything we know or run from.

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In my hand, all
touch astounds me.

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Color of the dead is
also touch, their faces

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and their voices pressed
against thee touch by touch.

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A miracle that words are green
still after an age of dryness

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at the rising sap-filled
leaves and shoots.

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The sun still bright
and the engulfing dark

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is an illusion barely known,
a deeper darkness hiding

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all the firmament unhinged.

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A miracle from this trench
and place, a universe is born.

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Sheer accident denotes
a further miracle.

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The dish falls from my
hand and finds the ground.

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An apple shows the
marks of teeth.

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A rush of things
more real than words

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or less, the time has come
to add up what we know.

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It floats in air.

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I reach for it.

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The grass sweats.

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Words turn green.

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A finger signals a new miracle.

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The sky leads into empty space.

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The mind is helpless
to address or fill.

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Only in the little world
can we both love and kill.

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The solipsist is king here,
waiting for the end of time

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and knowing that it's endless.

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A miracle by which the dead
animal and man lie fallen,

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never to rise again but
sanguine in their dissolution

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then slow progression
into flesh and out again

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continues while the world does.

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Only then no trace of mind
remains truer than this.

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A miracle, the small worlds
and the vast, the way the blood

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appears sudden and hot, the sun
at daybreak lighting the wound.

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The firmament persists over the
sun and moon the deeper image

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that it hides where light
and dark change places.

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A time that makes the
mystery of time and space.

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A miracle, to place a foot on
solid ground and know the Earth

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rotates 1,000 miles a day
at the equator, barely

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an inch at either pole.

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The ordinary rise and fall at
how we breathe and move, steps

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taken in the rush and crush of
galaxies dark more than light.

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If time is endless, what
we feel as time deceives us

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with the miracle
of what we feel.

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The ordinary push of
days against the grain.

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A miracle, the lie
of beauty dazzles

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us, deceitful elf, duende
and capriccio hiding pain

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and hunger, ready to explode.

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A miracle, the Earth
collapsing into

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ruin while the larger
world survives.

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There say the human ceases,
gone astray, and leaves a trace

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behind the breath or whisper
ready to become a word.

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The picture in the
mind is not a picture

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until you call it forth
a pixel at a time.

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A miracle where none exists
to call your own mind

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into being then to touch the
hairs, the skin from which they

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spring.

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The ordinary smells
that sex brings

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and the heat rising
from the depths.

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A history contain, a touch of
fingers, not the first or last.

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The final letter names
the end and vanishes.

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The miracle of sound
absorbed the body

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freed to speak its world.

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A miracle, the tread
of foot on Earth,

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the Earth a further miracle.

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The firmament no longer
there to stunt our view.

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A miracle of sequence,
numbers covering a wall.

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The sky itself a
field of numbers,

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numbers as an alphabet,
a game of numbers

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lightly drawn and lightly
peppering the mind

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inscribed in dreams, the dream
of hunger leading to a world,

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counted a number
engrafted in the flesh.

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A miracle, the flowers in the
garden grow tacky and decline.

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The path to the miraculous
not what we thought or ever

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reckoned but to draw breath day
by day waiting for the breath

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to be exhausted.

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The flow of blood to dry.

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The miracle of death,
the greatest miracle.

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A miracle to wake
up from a dream

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and count the dream
itself a miracle.

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The flower in the dream
as ordinary as the flower

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awake and spoken in your voice.

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The word is such a
flower broken and adrift,

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the sound reverberating more a
miracle than what the eye sees

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or the mind knows.

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A miracle to have
been spared this far.

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The beauty in the little
known, the everyday

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repeated at a finger's
touch to translate

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what we know to what's
barbaric, vast, and wild.

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The book of witness opens.

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All the words we have
are theirs and lead us

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eyeless, whispering.

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The years themselves a miracle
over against the world of pain.

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Coda, for Diane.

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A miracle, the
unseen overtaking us,

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the larger world
in darkness darker

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than the mystery of birth.

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The miracle resides in
what we see and touch.

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So good to be here
and to bow to you.

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My dearest friend in darkness.

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As the poet said.

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