WEBVTT

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Couple of poems
from my latest book.

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If I can find it.

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This one's called "That's
Life", as in that's life.

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It couldn't be closer
than Mars these days.

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First you're off
on a tangent, then

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glittering beyond the call in
the backyard to no good effect.

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Later when you
shrugged you were blue,

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I mistook it for "that's
life" not "help me."

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I mistake many things in
dusk like seeing liberty

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everywhere today,
smallish unacknowledged

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moments of door holding, tossing
coins into a worn paper cup,

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smiling.

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To rediscover our neighborhood
one wrapper and bum at a time.

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Where am I going with this?

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Down to the riverbank to watch
the light dazzle and showcase

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trees in all their
prehistoric movement.

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Two more animals
blinking in the breeze.

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The the guest-host relationship
is bigger than a house,

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older than cold
planets in space.

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One of the earliest manuals
is about the guest-host thing.

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Sit down, breathe deeply
and welcome yourselves.

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If you listen you can
faintly recall the song.

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The sweet height
of it all breaking

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free from a canopy of leaves.

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Remember the day you first
took in the night sky?

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I mean really let it enter
and unfold along the interior

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when the architecture
of the body

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resembles a cauldron for a dying
star, twinkle twinkle inside,

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and inside that a simple hole.

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So now you know what it
is to be sucking air,

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to be walking upright, to love.

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Why not enjoy the day, this
moment to moment thing,

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and the furnace above sending
you messages: breathe, dummy.

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Birds do it and
the rest of the ark

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all following the great
blank of what's next.

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What's next is courage.

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To take it all in
and feel it for

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keeps, that persons you meet
have a hole too and a twinkle.

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Embrace them and have a meal.

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Look straight into
their impermanent flash,

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the nervous-system
tic of their talk.

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Welcome their knowing not
knowing their coming and going.

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