WEBVTT

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"Elephants in the Fall"
for Micah and Miles.

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"I. Micah Michael Zamir Betts.

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November's flame in that year
of hard sunsets, of winter's

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plangency and days when my
insomnia courted cognac.

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All our thoughts
were beginnings,

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and you became the roundness
that grew to a moon

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above your mother's hips.

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We waited without a name for
your wonder and three days

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after your birth twice named
you for the uncle you'll never

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meet.

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The names questions,
Micah, who resembles God.

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Michael, who reminds us
of who has gone too soon.

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And we pronounced
Micah as we wanted--

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Mekhi, because like
the kid from Clockers ,

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we scrape fists and cuffs
for the dreams of you.

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And now, when on most days your
body is all blur and bustle--

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our song is how right we got it,
when the light from that moon

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spilled out of your
mother's belly, I tell you,

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you were smiling
then, as if you knew

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you were the first song
that found me worthy.

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II.

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Miles Thelonious Betts.

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Named after the trumpet,
after the sound that

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comes from all the hurt
and want that leads a man

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to turn his back to the world.

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We named you after Monk,
too, because sometimes you

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have to stack legends in
a single body already big,

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enough for the sound of
them, and we imagined

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that you gave us a different
tune, a way to bang keys

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into each other until our lives
filled with unexpected music.

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I hear you call me
daddy in this land

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where my father's
name is sometimes

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another word for grave,
and I almost pause.

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It's the song that
wants to unravel me.

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More crow than swan, I've always
been so much cage and caged in.

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And all that changes
when we square

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the M. This old riff
on a shotgun marriage

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calls as a back, your mother's
hand in mine and the shotgun

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is what we aim at the
world that threatens,

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and I scoop you in my arms,
and you are calling us.

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Again."

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