WEBVTT

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Well, my beloved daughter,
Lucinda Bliss, some of you

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know, and she is an
artist, visual artist.

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And when she turned
40, we went on a trip

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to Oaxaca, which is one
of my favorite places.

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So I will read you a poem
that comes from that trip,

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really comes from the
flight back from Oaxaca.

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"The Village".

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"The jet crosses an hour
of plush green forest,

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a single dirt road zagging
upslope to a village

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the size of an atoll.

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'How did they get there?,' asks
the woman in the seat behind

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me.

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'They were born there
and they stayed,' I bark,

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surprised at my bite.

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Cities are like
lakes, gathering water

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from the hillsides, an
aluminum ribbon curling down

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through mountains like
the footpaths of those

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who leave and get swept
into the larger flow.

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Maybe the family I
saw at the airport

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came from such a place,
the women's heads wrapped

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in shawls, faces
of silt and furrow.

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Everyone, the men too,
weeping, 15 or 20,

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who'd come to see two
boys leave on the flight

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to Tijuana to become soldiers
or border guards, belonging,

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ruptured by duty
and family need.

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Even after the boys
had left, the family,

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the village remained
clustered at the window.

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An atoll in the
future's slosh and flow.

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