WEBVTT

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And now, let me read
a few new poems.

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Or maybe I'm being premature
to call them new poems.

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Perhaps, they are
unfinished poems.

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These here are just a few
stanzas from a longish poem

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called "Sheffield Pastorals."

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"The biting insects
don't like blood that

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tastes of the fear of dying.

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They like the blood of people
who can imagine themselves

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entering other lifeforms.

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These are the ones the
mosquitoes sing to in the dark,

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and the deer flies
like to circle,

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studying with yellow eyes.

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In the other animals,
the desire to die

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comes when existing
wears out existence.

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In us, this desire
sometimes comes too early,

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causing us to kill ourselves.

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And sometimes, it never
comes, and we have

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to be dragged away screaming.

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No one knows how to die
well, not even Jesus

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going back to his father.

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And yet, dying gets done.

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And we see the owl,
throwing up both arms

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as she alights on a ridgepole.

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And we know someone
is accepted back

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into the family of mortals."

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