WEBVTT

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"Have At It."

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It's a little work poem.

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"When you work here for 10
years, you get a blanket.

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The blanket has their
name on it, not yours.

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I am conducting an anecdotal
survey of longtime employees.

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And I have yet to
find one person who

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uses the thing to keep warm.

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M reported placing it between
her children and the dirt

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before they all sat
down to a meal outside.

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S recounted how
she'd wrestled it out

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of a hat-stuck bureau drawer to
wrap her beagle's body after he

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died.

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She buried that dog herself
in her bloom-less little side

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yard and registered
embarrassment when the meter

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reader caught her
there, intoning over

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the body with a hymnal.

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But why should she
be embarrassed?

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It certainly can't be beneath
us to bless our animal dead

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when all our scientists do
all day is endeavor to prove

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that great apes mourn,
that elephants mourn,

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that house flies mourn,
that when a fiddle leaf

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ficus succumbs, another ficus
keens in its earthenware.

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We would like to
confirm that everyone

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is recognized in death,
unseen as we are in this life.

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It's all we have."

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Here are two state poems.

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