WEBVTT

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I'm going to close
with two short poems.

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One takes us back to our
own desert here in Tucson.

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"A family begins early in a
remote spot of the desert.

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Hauls well water.

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Makes a fire of a
bundle of mesquite.

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Takes the boiling corn
off the fire, grinds it,

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roasts poblanos, grinds
them, gathers more mesquite,

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kills and plucks and cooks a
chicken, checks for scorpions,

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smells for rain.

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The day is strangely
over by sunset.

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The next day is
virtually the same.

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Carried along by an
iridescent spirit

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like a hummingbird in a monsoon,
I am made to look in on it.

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I can never stay, never finish.

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All so delicious,
redolent of effort.

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A pleasurable melancholy
field of stony soil,

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I return at will.

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But the visit is always cut
short by deft soft hands,

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going about their
fixed business who've

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served me I see only now,
indifferently, appropriately.

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As I excuse myself walking
barefoot and shirtless

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many miles of tiles from room
to room of my modest home,

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near the end of another summer
with its embattled project,

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the jumpy present sends its
insubstantial ambulance,

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streaking toward the
emergency room of my eardrum."