Now this poem-- they're always going to stay.
I can't figure out whether it's read one or two.
OK we'll save this for the last then.
Let me hook this one onto that thematic group
I read you very loosely.
This is a poem about the creativity,
really about the creativity in the universe.
Which somehow or other if you're creative in any way,
and there are thousands of ways to be creative,
you hit dry spells no matter what it is, what you're doing.
And when you're not looking for it
sometimes the universe presents you with something.
In this case a poem, but could be anything,
because there's just something in it that does it.
The only thing I should do is identify Ted Weiss probably
for some of you.
He's a poet.
Ted Weiss who was mentioned in the poem is a poet.
This is called "Moose in the Morning, Northern Maine".
"At 6:00 AM the log cabins nose an immense cow-pie of mist
that lies on the lake.
19 pale goldfinches perch side by side on the telephone
wire that runs to shore, and under them
the camp cow, her bones pointing this way and that,
is collapsed like a badly constructed pup
tent in the dark weeds.
Inside, I am building a fire in the old woodstove
with its rod overhead for hunters' clothes to steam on.
I am hunting for nothing--
perhaps the three cold pencils that
lie on the table like kindling could go in to start the logs.
I remember Ted Weiss saying, quote "At the exhibition
I suddenly realized Picasso had to remake everything he laid
his eyes on into an art object.
He couldn't let the world alone.
Since then I don't write every morning."
End quote.
The world is warming and lightning and mist
on the pond dissolves into bundles and ribbons.
At the end of my dock there comes clear,
bared by the gentle burning, a monstrous hulk
with thorny head, up to his chest
in the water, mist writhing round him.
Grander and grander grows the sun until he gleams,
his brown coat glistens, the great rack, five feet wide,
throw sparks of light.
A ton of monarch, munching, he stands spotlit.
Then slowly, gravely, the great neck
lowers head and 40 pounds of horn to sip the lake.
The sun stains the belittled cow's hide amber.
She heaves her bones and bag and her neckbell
gongs as she gets to her feet in yellow blooms of squaw-weed.
On the telephone wire all the little golden bells
are ringing as that compulsive old scribbler, the universe,
jots down another day."