Thank you.
I'm really delighted to be here.
I have very good friends here, they're wonderful writers here,
and I think your landscape is miraculous.
I know you're not personally responsible for it,
but it's a terrific part of the country.
I thought I would start by reading
a new poem about Halley's comet, it's very timely.
I don't know if it's going to be a spectacular as the last time
that it appeared, but I'm going to hope so.
"Halley's Comet."
A nomad roaming the starlit halls of evening
in a cold sweat from some early tantrum of light,
it bolts toward the glow of a dashing blue planet, ancient,
glacial, always in a lather to blaze its loop
through the pastures of the sun.
A rumor at first on 1,000 glass lips,
it passes like winter from land to land,
stretching a long arm around the shivers of the night,
waving its white plume, cascading lilies,
signing the blue petition of each day with its haste.
Dropped out of nothing, it will return to nothing, but in
between toasts the miracle waters of Earth:
the long sermon of her deserts, the green wings of her jungles,
the pink moths of her cities trembling along the hilltops,
the thick fungus of her buildings,
the worn brown corduroy of her farms,
the walking symphonies of dappled cells,
themselves wonder enough to startle the eons.
A waltzing iceberg large as life, it arrives with a shout
and will go with a whisper,
canish from the fragrant isolation of our skies,
tugged away by a grip beyond plea, beyond mourning,
as if it heard news from a far country
it will leave with its cold gem like pith, a moment's
gorgeous visitor, fading.