Two more.
This one's called "Saturday and its Festooned Potential."
Really like the title, you know.
OK, I wrote this poem.
And then, about two hours later, Hadley Guest
called me to tell me that her mother Barbara
Guest had passed away.
It's like one of those things.
Barbara Guest, does that ring any bells to anybody?
Her new book of poems, collected poems just came out,
and I just really invite you to find her work and to read it.
It's absolutely glorious, and she's
worthy of being compared to Stevens.
She's a great poet.
So I'll read this for her.
"Saturday and its Festooned Potential."
"Faces, unlike weather, never return, no matter
how closely they resemble rain.
In this theater, time isn't cruel, just different.
Does that help?
When the overgrown skyway becomes calm, humans get quiet.
When the notion of myth or collective anything
is undone by wind chimes by a gentle tink tink.
When the mind is opened forth by a gentle tink tink, or light
speckled and whooping in the periphery.
When light whooping and speckled is most
pleasing to a body at rest.
When thought, open attaches itself
to repose to the forehead.
When twigs swaying just outside the library's large glass
signal, scratch, and join to an idea of history.
When twigs scratching, join to an idea of time,
to a picture of being.
Like to be beside and becoming, to be another and oneself.
To be complete inside the poem.
To be oneself becoming a poem."