WEBVTT

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It's called "Two Stories."

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Again, as I say, I
used to live in Laguna.

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And this is set in
California overlooking

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the ocean, the Pacific.

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And those are the
lights that are

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spoken of in the first
part of the poem.

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And I was brought up in a place
called Kingsport, Tennessee.

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And I lived on about five
miles out of town on a mountain

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where you could see the
town lights down below.

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And that comes in.

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And it ends up with a
slight little ejaculation

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to my fifth-grade teacher
whom I liked very much.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I couldn't ejaculate
and do it right.

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So I'll do it now, do it now.

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Anyhow.

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"Two Stories."

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Jesus, what's the
matter with me?

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It's Jon Anderson who's
making me do this.

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It's--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Anyhow.

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"Two Stories."

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"Tonight on the deck, the
lights semaphore up at me

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through the atmosphere,
town lights.

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Familiar lights pulsing
and slacking off the way

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they used to back on the
ridge outside of Kingsport

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35 years ago.

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The moonlight sitting
inside my head

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like knives, the
cold like a drug

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I knew I'd settle down with.

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I used to imagine
them shore lights,

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as these are, then,
as something inside me

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listened with all its weight
for the sea surge and the sea

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change.

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There's a soft spot in
everything our fingers touch.

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The one place where
everything breaks

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when we press it just right.

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The past is like that
with its arduous edges

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and blind sides, the worlds
of our fingerprints embedded

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along its walls like fossils
the sea has left behind.

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This is a story I swear is true.

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I used to sleepwalk but
only on camping trips

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or whenever I slept outside.

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One August, when I was 11 on
Mount LeConte in Tennessee,

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campfire over and ghost story
over, everyone still asleep,

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apparently I arose
from my sleeping bag,

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opened the tent
flap, and started out

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on the trail that
led to the drop

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off where the
mountainside went straight

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down for almost 1,000 feet.

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Half moon and cloud
cover, so some light as I

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went on up the path through the
rhododendron, the small pebbles

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and split roots like
nothing under my feet.

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The cliffside was half a
mile from the campsite.

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As I got closer, moving
blindly, unerringly,

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deeper in sleep than the
shrubs, I stepped out,

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it appears, onto the smooth lip
of the rock cape of the cliff.

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When my left hand--

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and then my right
hand stopped me

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as they were stopped
by the breathing

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side of a bear which woke me.

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And there we were.

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The child and the black
bear and the cliff drop.

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And this is the way it went.

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I stepped back.

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And I turned around.

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And I walked down
through the rhododendron

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and never looked back, truly
awake in the throbbing world.

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And I ducked through the low
flap of the tent so quietly.

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And I went to sleep and
never told anyone until years

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later when I thought I knew what
it meant which now I've forgot.

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And this one is questionable,
though sworn to me

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by an old friend who killed a
six-foot diamondback about 7

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o'clock in the morning

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(he'd found it coiled
in a sunny place)

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and threw it into a croker
sack with its head chopped off

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and threw the sack in
the back of a jeep,

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then left for his
day's work on the farm.

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That evening, he started to
show the snake to someone

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and put his hand in the
sack to pull it out.

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As he reached in, the
snake's stump struck him.

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His wrist was
bruised for a week.

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It's not age, nor
time with his gold

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eyelid and blink,
nor disillusion

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and all its mimicry that
lifts us and sorts us out.

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It's discontinuity and all its
spangled coming between that

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sends us apart and keeps
us there in a dread.

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It's what's in the
rearview mirror, smaller

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and out of sight.

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What do you do when the words
don't come to you anymore?

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And all the embolisms
fade in the dirt?

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And the ocean sings
in its hammock,

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rocking itself back and forth?

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And you live at
the end of the road

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where the sky starts
its dark decline?

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The barking goes on and
on from the far hill

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constantly sticking its
noise in my good ear.

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Goodbye, Miss Sweeney.

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Goodbye.

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I'm starting to think about
the psychotransference

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of all things.

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It's small bones
in the next life.

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It's small bones, and heel
and toe forever and ever."

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