WEBVTT

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I'm thinking, I'm
going to read one more.

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Mainly because--
because well, my mother

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used to tell me that she would
hide in the garage, when she

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couldn't take the kids anymore.

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When she couldn't take us.

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And she'd just go there
for a few minutes,

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and I said, "So
that's where you were.

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Where's mom?"

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And I didn't understand it.

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I thought it was a
terrible thing to do,

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until I had a child, who is
actually here tonight all

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grown up.

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Who now has a child
and understands,

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I think, a little bit of
what this poem is about.

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"Daystar"

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"She wanted a little
room for thinking,

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but she saw diapers
steaming on the line,

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a doll slumped behind the door.

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So she lugged a chair
behind the garage

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to sit out the children's naps.

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Sometimes there were
things to watch,

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the pinched armor of a vanished
cricket, a floating maple leaf.

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Other days she
stared until she was

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assured when she
closed her eyes,

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she'd see only her
own vivid blood.

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She had an hour at best
before Liza appeared, pouting,

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from the top of the stairs.

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And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice?

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Why, building a palace.

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Later that night when Thomas
rolled over and lurched

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into her, she
would open her eyes

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and think of the
place that was hers

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for an hour, where she
was nothing, pure nothing,

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in the middle of the day."

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