WEBVTT

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And, these are poems
concerning places.

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And, the first poem
is about Vermont,

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where we live in the summertime.

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And we live up in the
mountains, and, up there,

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our nearest neighbors
live there year-round.

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And when we first
moved up there,

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the father was a woodsman.

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He had taken a course by mail
on how to run road machinery,

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and doing better for himself,
and is working on the road,

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actually.

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But they're very
simple people and have

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many, many beautiful
ceremonies, especially connected

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with the one-room schoolhouse.

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And every morning, for
instance, the children

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go out of doors and pledge
allegiance to the flag

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and raise the flag together, but
it's a very serious ceremony.

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And they have a
particularly beautiful thing

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they do for Memorial Day.

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All of the mountain
children go out

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and gather wildflowers
and lilacs, too.

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Everything, but
mostly wildflowers.

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And they fill up their
wagons, and bring them

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down to the school, and
then the parents come,

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and they all sit
outside, and then

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there is this very
serious program--

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short program-- and
they sing [INAUDIBLE].

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And then, they get in a line
with the wagons of flowers

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and children, and
they cross the bridge

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from the one-room schoolhouse
to the little pre-revolutionary

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graveyard, where they put the
flowers around on the graves.

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And these children
down the road from me,

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we've known them now
[? since they ?] [? were-- ?]

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it's a large family--

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since the oldest
ones were small.

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And now, they're getting
[? past ?] that age of--

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or they're going
into that age, when

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I wrote this poem,
that metamorphosis

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that comes around--

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12, some of them were.

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And I mentioned [? that ?]
[? in ?] [? the-- ?]

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it's called "A Ceremony 
of Flowers in Vermont".

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Out by the nettles, by last
year's blackberry canes,

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Jeanette is
daydreaming in the sun.

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The stand of hemlocks edging
the ravine, black and green,

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laces a dark roof
above the trillium.

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Wan fine
veined spring beauties

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crowd around the rocks
in the open field,

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and trout lilies fill in
between the mosses, where

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the other children
run, jumping from rock

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to rock in the high meadow
under the flocks of crows.

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All horse and ruckus in
the windy blowing away

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of the snow mold.

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And where the last old
patches withered to gray,

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wind flowers clash in the
soundless chiming of petals.

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The others have
gone over the fence,

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up field, to gather
flowers for Memorial Day.

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They are sticky with nettles,
Richard and Lauri and Rachel.

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They have grown too large
for their winter jackets.

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Their pale veined wrists hang
down below their sleeves.

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They have put crow's foot
and adder's-tongue into their

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pockets, and they are all
shouting with a strange new

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language [INAUDIBLE].

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