WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"In the Grand

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Scheme of Things," which is
something I say all the time.

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And then I realized, what
grand scheme of things?

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It sounds like someone
wound up the wrens

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and let them go,
let them chatter

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across your lawn
like cheap toys.

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And from here, an
airplane seems to fly only

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from one tree to another, barely
chalking a line between them.

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We say "the naked eye," as
if the eye could be clothed,

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as if it isn't the world
that refuses to undress

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unless we turn our backs.

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It shows us what it
chooses, nothing more,

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and it's not waxing pastoral.

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There is too much now at stake.

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The skeletal rattle
you hear at the window

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could be only the hellion
roses and the wind,

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their thorns etching the glass.

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But it could be bones.

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The country we call ours isn't.

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And it's full of them.

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Every year you dig that
goddamn rose bush from the bed,

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spoon it from soil like a tumor.

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And every year it grows
back, thick and wild.

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We say "in the grand scheme of
things," as if there were one.

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We say "that's not how the world
works," as if the world works.

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