WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.782 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.782 --> 00:00:08.640 align:middle line:84% And I forgot I was supposed to read one of my own, 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:10.905 align:middle line:90% so I'll read a short one. 00:00:10.905 --> 00:00:13.760 align:middle line:90% 00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:15.070 align:middle line:90% I was thinking so-- 00:00:15.070 --> 00:00:17.123 align:middle line:84% thank you so much, LeAnne Howe, for allowing 00:00:17.123 --> 00:00:18.790 align:middle line:84% me to be published in The Georgia Review 00:00:18.790 --> 00:00:22.750 align:middle line:84% last spring with a special Southeastern issue. 00:00:22.750 --> 00:00:24.760 align:middle line:84% And they accepted this poem, which 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:28.090 align:middle line:84% is really about in seeing and looking 00:00:28.090 --> 00:00:32.980 align:middle line:84% at the maps of the Southeast and not seeing our Muskogee 00:00:32.980 --> 00:00:35.680 align:middle line:84% homelands there, but through a different kind of visibility, 00:00:35.680 --> 00:00:37.850 align:middle line:90% a different kind of insight. 00:00:37.850 --> 00:00:40.070 align:middle line:84% So this is from The Georgia Review. 00:00:40.070 --> 00:00:42.630 align:middle line:90% And it's from a long collection. 00:00:42.630 --> 00:00:45.040 align:middle line:90% It's just a section. 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:48.540 align:middle line:84% I find you nowhere that is here or there. 00:00:48.540 --> 00:00:52.850 align:middle line:84% Below the sunken Uchee path, iron ore. 00:00:52.850 --> 00:00:56.300 align:middle line:84% The ridge-dividing water veined with it. 00:00:56.300 --> 00:01:00.510 align:middle line:84% Pea vine wiregrass, short leaf hickory, 00:01:00.510 --> 00:01:04.680 align:middle line:84% old fields' flood plains, indigo dyed. 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:08.550 align:middle line:84% When the woods were still dense, saw palmetto, 00:01:08.550 --> 00:01:12.420 align:middle line:84% grapes of the hills destroyed by fire, and the haw chestnut 00:01:12.420 --> 00:01:14.610 align:middle line:90% by the hatchet. 00:01:14.610 --> 00:01:17.460 align:middle line:84% If it were easy to leave our bodies in the fork of Red 00:01:17.460 --> 00:01:20.490 align:middle line:90% River, two mounds of Earth. 00:01:20.490 --> 00:01:23.820 align:middle line:84% If it were easy to leave you behind in a stream 00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:28.440 align:middle line:84% clear with flowering stones, to find you in the language 00:01:28.440 --> 00:01:32.790 align:middle line:84% where I lost you as if you were a sentence in this poem, 00:01:32.790 --> 00:01:36.450 align:middle line:84% and this poem an archive of the forest. 00:01:36.450 --> 00:01:39.470 align:middle line:84% But I've burned the remaining pine. 00:01:39.470 --> 00:01:43.220 align:middle line:84% On the bluffs, strawberries thinly scattered. 00:01:43.220 --> 00:01:47.150 align:middle line:84% And in the old beaver ponds, briar root, 00:01:47.150 --> 00:01:49.805 align:middle line:84% a bread made of it for times of famine. 00:01:49.805 --> 00:01:52.470 align:middle line:90% 00:01:52.470 --> 00:01:54.620 align:middle line:90% Thank you all so much.