WEBVTT

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I want to read a sort of a clump
of poems from this sequence

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that I've been working on.

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I don't know how many of you
lived in one place in one town

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before then you went off to
school or went off to wherever,

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but I did.

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And I think that's
probably less and less

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common to the
American experience.

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But I lived in the
same town, in fact,

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in pretty much the same house.

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And then I realized a couple
of years ago that now that

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I've-- since I moved to Vermont,
I've lived in the same place

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almost as long as I
lived that other place.

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So, this is a sequence of poems
that tries to deal with place.

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And the ones that
I will read tonight

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are all set in the part of
Virginia where I grew up.

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Short Story.

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My grandfather killed
a mule with a hammer,

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or maybe with a
plank or a stick.

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Maybe it was a horse.

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The story varied in the telling.

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If he was planting corn when
it happened, it was a mule

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and he was plowing the upper
slope west of the house,

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his overalls stiff to
the knees with red dirt,

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the lines draped
behind his neck.

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He must have been glad to
rest when the mule first

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stopped mid-furrow, looked
back at where he'd come,

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then down to the brush along
the creek he meant to clear.

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No doubt, he noticed
the hawk's great leisure

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over the field, the crows
lumped in the biggest

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elm on the opposite hill.

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After he'd wiped his hat
brim with his sleeve,

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he called to the
mule as he slapped

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the line along its rump,
clicked and whistled.

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My grandfather was
a slight, quiet man,

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smaller than most women,
smaller than his wife.

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Had she been in the yard seeing
him heading toward the pump

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now, she'd pump for him
a dipper of cold water.

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Walking back to the
field, past the corn crib,

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he took an ear of corn
to start the mule,

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but the mule was planted.

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He never cursed or
shouted, only whipped it,

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the mule rippling its backside
each time the switch fell.

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And when that didn't work,
whipped it low on its side

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where it's tender,
then cross hatched

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the welts he'd made already.

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The mule went down
on one knee, and that

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was when he reached
for the blown limb

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or walked to the pile
of seasoning lumber,

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or else unhooked the plow and
took his own time to the shed

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to get the hammer.

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By the time I was born, he
couldn't even lift a stick.

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He lived another 15
years in a chair,

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but now he's dead and so
is his son who never meant

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to speak a word against
him, and whom I never

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asked what his father was
planting and in which field,

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and whether it happened
before he had married,

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before his children came
in quick succession,

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before his wife died
of the last one.

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And only a few of us are left
who ever heard that story.

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