WEBVTT

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So that's Wilderness
and Razor Wire.

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I'd like to read just a
couple of short passages

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from Time of Grace.

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This is my latest book.

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This is the book that
Dick and I toured with.

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It came out in 2007.

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It's more nature,
but I took the--

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the book is kind of framed
around my encounters

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with nature while
I was in prison.

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It covers the last three
years I was locked up

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of my 12 year sentence.

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But I also delve
into other interests

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of mine-- family, my wife
Karen, who's here today,

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my three daughters.

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They stayed with me through
the whole experience.

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I mean, she did
nearly as much time

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as I did sitting in
that visitation area

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all those years.

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She didn't like it much.

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So I talk about my family
relationship, my daughters,

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and I also get into this
area of crime and punishment.

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So I'm going to breeze
through some of those,

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beginning with this.

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In the morning, I
sit outside my tent

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drinking coffee and looking west
toward the Tucson mountains,

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toward my family.

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My girls will be
rising now for school.

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Cassandra, always the earliest,
will be up and dressed already,

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making herself cinnamon
toast, lightly buttered,

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for breakfast.

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Prison makes me feel so
helpless, isolated, fermented

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by emotions, like I'm the
subject of an Edvard Munch

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painting.

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The anxiety and despair
hang on, sapping my capacity

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for peace of mind.

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I become an ocotillo in drought,
dropping leaves and bearing

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thorns.

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I need to find a sense of
place, even in this place,

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to find a sense of time.

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I need to mark my landscape
with more than images

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of concrete and steel,
to mark my year with more

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than discarded calendar pages.

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For now, all I
have is this place.

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But prisons do exist
at the margins,

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those in-between places
where life comes together,

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adjusts, and teams.

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Even at the desert
margins near here,

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there is a species of
grassland whiptail lizard,

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a race of females that
reproduces without sex.

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Despite the
limitations of gender,

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despite even the limitations
of razor wire and chain link,

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there are no real borders,
only the effect of edges.

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After work and the afternoon
mandatory lock down and count,

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I walk the track, making
perimeter circuits

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6/10 of a mile per lap
along the edge of my world.

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Somewhere a Say's phoebe
calls inconsolably.

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And I'm looking for the bird,
when a sudden flush of feathers

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startles me, wings in my
face, two pairs of wings.

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A dove hits the fence
with a metallic ring

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and then drops to the
ground, its breast torn

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and red and heaving.

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Last night, a
disturbance of birds

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alerted me to the presence
of a Cooper's hawk here,

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an immature female by her
brown streaked breast and size,

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the first I'd seen at Echo unit.

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This afternoon,
she's made a kill,

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or had until I blundered
onto the scene.

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Now she's atop a light
pole and staring at me.

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I back away and wait.

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Nothing.

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The bird lies
motionless but alive.

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The hawk watches it.

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I make two more laps
and nothing changes.

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Then as I finish
the third, I see

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her flying low to the
ground outside the perimeter

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fence, the dove facing
forward and tucked calmly

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into her talons, as if
only going for a ride.

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I think this is the way out.

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I follow the pair with
my eyes until the two

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are part of the landscape,
my own bit of mystery

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with feathers and claws and edge
effect that raises my spirits.

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It's not Dickinson's thing
with feathers that perches

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in the soul, but it's close.

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