And this last poem is a birthday poem.
Which I think of-- it's like I wrote it--
I was like macaroni art.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's like you want to make your beloved a present.
And I don't know how to make anything.
I was like I wrote you a poem and I like it.
But one never knows.
Like you make mac and-- just like, is it going to be good.
She has to say it's good.
I like it too.
Thank you.
I mean, what are you going to say right here?
Like boo.
That would be wild.
All right.
So this is titled, "What is the measure."
"I catalog when I cannot capture.
The sun, its ragged stumble into rock face.
The precise elevation of this plateau or the next.
The sea, of course, against which everything is measured.
My tools are inefficient, insufficient, inexact.
For instance, there is no way to measure
the peak against the distance from the tip of one ring finger
to the other.
No matter my arms position.
Outstretched, limp, akimbo.
For instance, there is no way to weigh the Earth pushed out
of the body against--
sorry.
For instance, there is no way to weigh the Earth pushed out
of the Earth against the gravity of my body.
Its bones, its sacs, its meat, and animating light.
I submit.
I do not constitute the mountain.
This in spite of the palette of old quilts and newly
fallen maple leaves I've made at its immeasurable base.
I submit.
I do not constitute the field although I
have harrowed its length, its width with my long feet.
My slow step.
Never mind.
I hear what scurries or scatters.
What burrows or bounds.
Never mind I raise my hand to hover the bank grass.
The echinacea is bald crowned.
All of which withers arrives.
All of which is new or nearly the same
before my foot's next fall.
I submit as with the mountain, the field.
As with the field, you.
Ineluctable as a season.
Sun ragging the rock face.
Your arm nearly as long as mine.
Your palm wider.
Your mouth a beginning.
Your eyes, of course, that against which everything else
is measured.
You harrow, and the summit rides.
Your broad foot falls.
And the field akimbo, gives up its gravity.
Lets loose its bodies.
Its bones.
Thrums an animating light."
Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]