I should say, speaking of moms, my mom is here and my grandmom
too.
So I just want to shout out to them.
Never heard of a shout out of a poetry reading, huh?
I read this poem--
My mother says this poem makes her feel good whenever,
so I want to read it for you.
"A Small Psalm"
"Sorrow be gone," I will say it doesn't work for me.
[LAUGHTER]
Which is a shame.
But maybe--
"A Small Psalm"
"Sorrow be gone, be a goner, be forsooth un-sooth,
make like a suit and beat it, vamoose from the heavy heavy,
be out from under the night's crawlspace,
call not for another stone, more weight, more weight,
be extinguished, extinguish the dark
that which is deep and hollow, that which presses
from all sides, that which squeezes your heart
into an artichoke-heart jar and forbids it
breathe, that which is measured by an unbalanced scale,
banish the broken, the unfixable, the shattered,
the cried-over, the cursed, the cursers,
the curses-- curse them, the stone from the stone fruit,
let it be fruit, the pit from the pitted,
the pock from the pocked, the rot from the rotten,
tarry not at the door, jamb not the door's
jamb, don't look back, throw nothing over your shoulder, not
a word, not a word's edge, vowel,
consonant, but run out, run out like the end of a cold wind,
end of a season, and in me be replaced
with a breath of light,
jack-o-lantern, a flood lamp or fuse box,
a simple match or I would even take a turn signal,
a traffic light, if it would beat beat and flash flood like
the moon at high tide, let it, let it,
let it flare like the firefly, let it spark and flash,
kindle and smoke, let it twilight and sunlight,
and sunlight and moonlight, and when it is done with its
lighting let it fly, will'-o-the-wisp, to heaven."