This next poem is called, "The Winning Hand."
And I wrote this, I had the Richard Hugo Chair in Montana,
spring of 1985.
I think it was around the time of his birthday
and I wrote this poem for him.
One of the stories that I've always loved-- well I
got to meet him.
First of all, one of the stories that I loved hearing about
was that at his funeral there were many, many people there.
And it wasn't just poets or university people,
but most of the people were made up of,
I guess, people on the streets, people that he'd met in bars
and had touched their lives or changed their lives--
plumbers, construction people.
And they had come because he had touched them
or had said something to them that
had made them feel closer to themselves,
to being human beings.
And I suppose he was one of the greatest, I don't know--
I have always admired his poetry,
but I admire his human beingness and I
guess I'd rather be a great human being than a great poet,
although I think sometimes they both connect.
And, anyway, this poem, "A Winning Hand,"
in it was the time in about 1978 or '79 when I was teaching
at the Institute of American Indian Arts and he
was doing a workshop and a reading
at University in New Mexico.
So, I asked my students if they wanted
to go down because this guy, they'd read some of his work,
and they liked his work, and they said, sure.
So I had this little red Datsun truck
and it was loaded with students.
We had them packed in as many as we could get in
and we went down, and what was really
wonderful is he took time and talked to them.
He read the students' work, he encouraged some of them
to apply, and it really meant a lot to them.
And at the end of the reading, you know,
we were looking around to get everyone together to go back
and we were looking around for Nez.
We couldn't find her.
Where's Nez?
Oh, she took off and went to Okies.
Okies is a-- I guess it's a mythical place now--
but it was a bar at the corner of Central and University
and it was like the biker bar, the bar where you would go
and people would be selling poems to buy drinks,
and you'd see people in there that never left.
They were always there when you went back.
They're probably still there.
Anyway, so I pulled up and I had a student get out
and I said, go in and get Nez.
So we were out there waiting.
You know, well, where's so and so?
Well, I'll go in and get them.
[LAUGHTER]
So before you knew it, we were all in there to get Nez.
And we finally left and Nez never did, you know?
Nez eventually came back up to school,
but this is for Richard Hugo.
It's "A Winning Hand."
In this university town of winners,
the wind is a blur through the dandelions
and nurtured grass on the lawn outside my office.
And you are here, but have gone on
to the buffalo skin dream that has fallen
in the cracks between the small towns that
make a necklace from Medicine Lake to Missoula.
Indians still dry jerky in the risky wind,
test the water for visions of Buffalo
who are more than just meat sustenance.
Aren't our bodies mostly wind and are
cursed like the rest of us with being able to smell but not
see the world we are crazy for.
You knew that place, traveled it until it drove you crazy, too,
to think like one of the beautiful native misfits.
In Albuquerque, in either '78 or '79,
you stunned my students from Indian School
in returning to the ghost towns their memories had become
in that auditorium built in a town spit
into existence by dry-lipped conquistadors who wanted
only gold and Indian wives.
Someone must have prophesied what they feared.
Nez couldn't take it, turned wads of clay into glossy bowls,
but they weren't enough to hold her words.
She abandoned us in that auditorium
for the corner bar of the lost poets.
After your last poem, your heart tearing us apart,
we all left to find her and had to chase ourselves out
of that place.
There is only the magnetism of ghosts driving us back
into the winning hand.
I don't think I looked back or believed you had ever gone.
When I hit the Montana border last spring
during the last hard storm, the wind nearly knocked me over.
And it wasn't poetry I heard, but something
like the moan and laughter of a player with a best
hand, a touch of luck.
This time it's all or nothing and there
won't be any more losers in this field of 10 and one-eyed Jacks.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.