"Late Spring.
And then in mid-May, the first morning
of steady heat, the morning, Leif says, when you wake up,
put on shorts, and that's it for the day, when you pour coffee
and walk outside blinking in the sun.
Strawberries have appeared in the markets,
and peaches will soon.
Squid is so cheap in the fish stores,
you begin to consult Japanese and Italian cookbooks
for the various and ingenious ways
of preparing ika and calamari.
And because the light will enlarge your days,
your dreams at night will be as strange as the jars of octopus
you saw once in the fisherman's boat under the summer moon;
and after swimming, white wine.
And the sharing of stories before dinner
is prolonged because the relations
of the children in the neighborhood
have acquired village intensity, and the stories
take longer telling.
And there are the nights when the fog rolls in
that nobody likes.
Hey fog, the Miwok sang, who lived here first,
you better go home.
Pelican is beating your wife.
And after dark, in the first cool hour,
your children sleep so heavily in their beds,
exhausted from play.
It is a pleasure to watch them.
Leif does not move a muscle as he lies there.
No wait, it is Luke who lies there
in his eight-year-old body.
Leif is taller than you are, and he isn't home.
When he is, his feet will extend past the end of the mattress,
and Kristin is at the corner in the dark,
talking to neighborhood boys.
Things change.
There is no need for this dream compelled narration.
The rhythm will keep me awake, changing."
[APPLAUSE]
I hired him, so it's right.
It's-- I-- you sit down now, please.
You're doing great.