I want to read from the last published book
and then end with some poems that have not yet
been collected, and after that poem about a bird,
I want to read a poem called Birdie, which was
the name of an aunt of mine.
You don't think anything that I know of.
But as for me when I think of you,
I don't know how many of you there are.
And I suppose you thought there was just the one.
How many times you may have been born
as my father's other sisters would say in your body.
Nobody is interested in things like that in the family.
Somebody wrote down though that you was born
one time on April 20, 1874.
So that my grandmother at that occasion was 13.
And the hardest thing to believe in that account as I think
of it is that she was ever 13 years old.
The way we grew up to hide things from each other.
So she had a little baby at that age.
And that was you, Birdie.
That was one of you.
Did you know?
It presents a different picture of my grandmother
from the one I was brought up to.
That was the you she had when she
was 13, which goes a long way to explain
her Puritanism and your gypsy earrings
and all the withered children who came after
and their scorn of your bright colors and your loud heart.
And maybe even your son who was delicate and an artist
and painted heads of Jesus on church walls
where they crumbled and could not be moved.
And your having a good time and dying in Arizona.
Except that as everybody knew that you was nothing
but a mistake in the writing.
And the real Birdie came along when grandma was into her 20s.
And she had her first born, a little baby girl,
which explains nothing.
Puritanism, earrings, the children who came after,
your son the frail artist, the crumbling heads
of Jesus, for having a good time and dying in Arizona,
that was the you I met one morning in summer whom
nobody could explain for you was different.
Inviting all them so unexpected and not
heard of for so long, your own mother, younger brother,
younger sisters, new nephew to breakfast,
laughing and waving your hands with all the rings.
And them not listening, saying they
was in a hurry to drive farther and see the family.
And you going on telling them everything there was to eat.