WEBVTT

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This next poem is
called "Santa Fe."

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And there's a place in
here, De Vargas Hotel,

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which they urbanized, or
New Yorkized, or whatever,

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and now it's--

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I was there to take my
daughter to Santa Fe Indian

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School a few weeks
ago, and it used

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to be a nice, cheap
place to stay,

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and now the only people
that can stay there are--

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no one who lives there could,
no one who's from there.

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But anyway, what got me
started on this poem,

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I was thinking about time,
and how time really works,

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and how time is a
very elastic being.

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And I was thinking
about the time

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I was standing on
San Francisco Street,

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in front of-- it's not far
from the St. Francis Cathedral,

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and I was probably either
like 16, or 18, or 20,

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something like that, and this
guy comes straight-- it's

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during the big hippie era,
and people were always walking

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around the streets barefooted,
and with their bells,

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and so on.

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And this guy comes driving up
on his motorcycle, this hippie

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guy, and we all knew him
because he loved Indians,

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so he was always hanging around.

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And he drives up and he says,
why don't you go with me,

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I'm going to San Francisco.

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And just get on my
bike, and we'll go.

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And I realized that I could--

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I stood there just for a second.

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I mean, I didn't like the guy
or anything, but I thought,

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I could make a choice here that
would change my whole life.

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I could get on the back
of this motorcycle,

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I wouldn't have to deal--

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I probably had a little
kid by then, my son.

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And I said, I could get on here,
I could just leave everything,

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and I could go be somebody
else in San Francisco.

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But I didn't, of course,
I guess basically,

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nobody would believe me, but
I'm a responsible person,

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so I didn't.

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But anyway I was thinking
about how a decision in a split

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second of time, how
that worked, and again,

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thinking about how time works
because it was like yesterday,

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it could be a future event.

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And I was thinking also,
when I was writing the poem,

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about the season in Santa
Fe about four years ago

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when lilacs were everywhere.

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It was almost like the town
had been taken over by lilacs.

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It really had been, only
most people didn't know it.

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And anyway, so I'm trying to
figure out how time works.

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"Santa Fe."

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"The wind blows lilacs
out of the east,

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and it isn't lilac season.

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And I am walking the street
in front of St Francis

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Cathedral in Santa
Fe from Denver, oh,

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and it's a few years
earlier and more.

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That's how you tell real
time, it is here, it is there.

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The lilacs have taken
over everything,

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the sky, the narrow streets,
my shoulders, my lips,

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I talk lilac.

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And there is nothing else
until a woman the size of a fox

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breaks through the bushes,
breaks the purple web.

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She is tall, and
black, and gorgeous.

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She is the size of a fox
on the arm of a white man

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who looks and
tastes like cocaine.

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She lies for cocaine, dangles
on the arm of cocaine,

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and lies to me now from
a room in the De Vargas

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Hotel, where she
has eaten her lover,

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a white powder on her lips.

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That is true now, it
is not true anymore.

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Eventually space
curves, walks over,

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and taps me on the shoulder.

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On the sidewalk I
stand near St Francis,

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he has been bronzed
to perpetual tan,

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with birds on his hand, his
shoulder, deer at his feet.

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I am Indian, and in this
town I will never be a saint.

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I am 17, and shy, and wild.

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I have been up until
3:00 with a party,

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but there is no woman in the
De Vargas Hotel, for that story

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hasn't yet been invented.

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A man whose face I will never
remember, and never did,

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drives up on a Harley Davidson.

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There are lilacs on his arm.

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They spill out from the
spokes of his wheels.

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He wants me on his arm, on
the back of his lilac bike,

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touring the flower
kingdom of San Francisco.

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And for a piece of time the
size of a nickel I think, maybe.

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But maybe is vapor,
has no anchor

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here in the sun beneath
St Francis Cathedral.

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And space is as solid as the
bronze statue of St Francis.

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The fox breaking
through the lilacs,

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my invention of this
story, the wind blowing.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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