I want to sort of read something totally different.
This is called "Old Mountain Road."
I used to live on a sort of a hill, top of a hill.
And it's one of those experiences that you--
if I told you about it--
I mean, it's all in the poem in a sense--
I would let the cat out of the bag, so "Old Mountain Road."
Something happened that astonished me
so much that I thought I had a vision
for the first time in my life.
I was William Blake or Allen Ginsberg or something,
you know?
"Old Mountain Road."
"In the dusk of the evening, when the goats
come, the two pale ones nodding as they pass, unattended,
taking their time to graze by the curve,
its sharpness indicated by a broken arrow.
In the last bit of daylight, I saw a blonde little girl
step out of nowhere and bow to them stiffly,
as one does at the conclusion of a school play,
and disappear, pinafore and all, in the bushes,
so that I sat on my porch dumbfounded.
The goats' intermittent tinkle growing fainter and fainter
and then hushing, as if on cue, for the whippoorwill
to take over briefly in the giant maple.
Child, I thought of calling out, knowing myself a born doubter."
Well, the solution to the mystery, some kids dressed--
being dressed for a school play up the road,
sneaking through the bushes, and et cetera.
The goats did it.
I mean, the goats sort of ushered the vision.
Let's see now.