WEBVTT

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I'm from Rhode Island
very far from here,

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and there's a little
sort of drainage

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pond in North Kingstown,
Rhode Island, which

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is down near the shore,
that by luck happens

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to be the habitat for many,
many, many beautiful lotus

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flowers, amazing lily
pads and these things

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that just like tower on
windy little fat stems.

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It's just the most
miraculous thing.

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You would never expect to
see that in Rhode Island.

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There's an explanation
for it, but we

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don't need to get into that.

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Just to know that there's
a miracle in Rhode Island,

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and I saw it.

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And so I wrote this--

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I wrote this poem after
that, because to see it does

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make you feel that
the impossible is not

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only possible, but at hand.

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And it's called "Boom."

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"Lotus in the mill pond are
an image of composition,

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like swans or some comparable
waterfall with long thin neck

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and propensity for
reflection, or for what

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passes as reflection but is
unburdened of its object.

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There is a stillness and
a motion all at once.

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They are a gift from heaven.

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They reverberate with presence
like periscoping showerheads

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in mantis green or fluffy pink
eyeballs suspended mid-flight.

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They are a laugh provoked
not by vanity or mockery,

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but happiness in light, as
if against all likelihood.

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Even the air is moving
up around these flowers,

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which, anchored in the muck and
wriggling on snakelike stalks

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amid leaves like floating
platters the size of manhole

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covers, act as
subwoofers in a system

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wired to someplace
endless, someplace sheerer

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than this ghost of a reservoir
that fed the waterwheel that

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powered the iron mill long
since converted into condos.

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The lotus boom the
low frequencies

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that recruit large pools
of neurons in the listener

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to lock the brain into
another rhythm, which

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is to say that they
relieve one of oneself.

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It's hard to account for but
easy to fathom, which derives

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from the Old English for the
length of outstretched arms

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so that to take the
measure of a thing

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is also simply to embrace it."

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