WEBVTT

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OK, looking at the
clock over there.

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Without my glasses, I can't see.

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[INAUDIBLE] still good.

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So someone asked me what
"The Maybe-Bird" is,

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and what the title--

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why I called it
"The Maybe-Bird,"

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and I honestly don't know.

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My first two books, I had
figures, women who were guides.

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The first one was Magdalena,
a particular woman

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who really existed, I think.

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I used to see her on
the side of the highways

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by the gas stations
wearing a blue dress when

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I used to drive from Santa Fe
to Tulsa, which I did frequently

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for several--

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a number of years when I was
taking care of my grandpa

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before he passed away.

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The second book there was
an elderly lady, Hoktvlwv,

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who I met on the
beach in California,

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and she became the
guide for that book.

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This one, "The Maybe-Bird,"
but the maybe-bird has not

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shown herself to me.

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So I actually
can't describe her.

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So this poem mentions
the maybe-bird.

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Oh, here we go.

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Sorry.

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I lay my aloneness in
the beast's shrine.

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By blood, I encountered
my formlessness.

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A sheer trough near the center
of a lake where I moor my boat

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and float in absence
collecting names I

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had forgotten or left at
the gates when I descended.

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Of the upper world, I
only remember a cellar

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lit by wisps and lamps.

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Portals to the sun,
its gilded reliquaries

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navigable not by
bird light or moon.

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Her face concealed behind
the stars' dull hatchets.

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Where snapped trees breathe
with ghost food, moss,

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I have laid my aloneness
in the beast's shrine,

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left my footprints
on the muddy shoals.

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The reflection of
myself in water

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dispersed by a nervous
brushwork of grass.

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Oh, maybe-bird, what
will you name me now,

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disappearing as I
am from the body?

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