Thank you.
This was billed as a poetry reading.
So I'm going to read one poem just to make it legal.
This is a poem that I almost left out of the book.
This is the last book, The Last Person to Hear Your
Voice, because I thought it was too light somehow,
didn't have enough weight.
And there's some pretty heavy poems
in this book, political poems especially.
And so then at the last moment, I
put it in just sort of give it a little balance.
And Ken and I toured all over the country
and then I toured with the One Book Arizona.
And this is the poem that was always requested.
I'm having a very serious problem with allergies,
hay fever, so excuse me if I have to keep wiping my nose.
The poem is if "I Were a Dog."
"I would trot down this road sniffing on one side and then
the other peeing a little here and there wherever
I felt the urge having a good time what the hell saving some
because it's a long road.
But since I'm not a dog, I walk straight down the road
trying to get home before dark.
If I were a dog and I had a master who beat me,
I would run away and go hungry and sniff around
until I found a master who loved me I could tell by his smell
and I would lick his face so he knew.
Or maybe it would be a woman.
I would protect her we could go everywhere together even
down this dark road and I wouldn't run from side
to side sniffing I would always be protecting her
and I would stop to pee only once in a while.
Sometimes in the afternoon we could go to the park
and she could throw a stick and I could bring it back to her
each time I put the stick at her feet
I would say this is my heart and she would say I will make it
fly but you must bring it back to me
I would always bring it back to her and to no other
if I were a dog."
[APPLAUSE]
There are several dog anthologies,
dog poem anthologies.
And I know of a couple of them.
One of them is in the voice of the dog, the poet's dog,
and one of them is about the poet's dog.
I don't know if Nancy Wall's here or not
but she has one in the book about the dog.
My favorite, I think, is one in the voice of the dog.
And I liked it so much, I memorized it.
It says, you gonna eat that?
You gonna eat that?
You're gonna eat that?
I'll eat that.
[LAUGHTER]