This next poem is called "Santa Fe."
And there's a place in here, De Vargas Hotel,
which they urbanized, or New Yorkized, or whatever,
and now it's--
I was there to take my daughter to Santa Fe Indian
School a few weeks ago, and it used
to be a nice, cheap place to stay,
and now the only people that can stay there are--
no one who lives there could, no one who's from there.
But anyway, what got me started on this poem,
I was thinking about time, and how time really works,
and how time is a very elastic being.
And I was thinking about the time
I was standing on San Francisco Street,
in front of-- it's not far from the St. Francis Cathedral,
and I was probably either like 16, or 18, or 20,
something like that, and this guy comes straight-- it's
during the big hippie era, and people were always walking
around the streets barefooted, and with their bells,
and so on.
And this guy comes driving up on his motorcycle, this hippie
guy, and we all knew him because he loved Indians,
so he was always hanging around.
And he drives up and he says, why don't you go with me,
I'm going to San Francisco.
And just get on my bike, and we'll go.
And I realized that I could--
I stood there just for a second.
I mean, I didn't like the guy or anything, but I thought,
I could make a choice here that would change my whole life.
I could get on the back of this motorcycle,
I wouldn't have to deal--
I probably had a little kid by then, my son.
And I said, I could get on here, I could just leave everything,
and I could go be somebody else in San Francisco.
But I didn't, of course, I guess basically,
nobody would believe me, but I'm a responsible person,
so I didn't.
But anyway I was thinking about how a decision in a split
second of time, how that worked, and again,
thinking about how time works because it was like yesterday,
it could be a future event.
And I was thinking also, when I was writing the poem,
about the season in Santa Fe about four years ago
when lilacs were everywhere.
It was almost like the town had been taken over by lilacs.
It really had been, only most people didn't know it.
And anyway, so I'm trying to figure out how time works.
"Santa Fe."
"The wind blows lilacs out of the east,
and it isn't lilac season.
And I am walking the street in front of St Francis
Cathedral in Santa Fe from Denver, oh,
and it's a few years earlier and more.
That's how you tell real time, it is here, it is there.
The lilacs have taken over everything,
the sky, the narrow streets, my shoulders, my lips,
I talk lilac.
And there is nothing else until a woman the size of a fox
breaks through the bushes, breaks the purple web.
She is tall, and black, and gorgeous.
She is the size of a fox on the arm of a white man
who looks and tastes like cocaine.
She lies for cocaine, dangles on the arm of cocaine,
and lies to me now from a room in the De Vargas
Hotel, where she has eaten her lover,
a white powder on her lips.
That is true now, it is not true anymore.
Eventually space curves, walks over,
and taps me on the shoulder.
On the sidewalk I stand near St Francis,
he has been bronzed to perpetual tan,
with birds on his hand, his shoulder, deer at his feet.
I am Indian, and in this town I will never be a saint.
I am 17, and shy, and wild.
I have been up until 3:00 with a party,
but there is no woman in the De Vargas Hotel, for that story
hasn't yet been invented.
A man whose face I will never remember, and never did,
drives up on a Harley Davidson.
There are lilacs on his arm.
They spill out from the spokes of his wheels.
He wants me on his arm, on the back of his lilac bike,
touring the flower kingdom of San Francisco.
And for a piece of time the size of a nickel I think, maybe.
But maybe is vapor, has no anchor
here in the sun beneath St Francis Cathedral.
And space is as solid as the bronze statue of St Francis.
The fox breaking through the lilacs,
my invention of this story, the wind blowing.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.