WEBVTT

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-- my father, in a sense.

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I wrote this a
couple of years ago

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when I had a fellowship to the
Provincetown Fine Arts Work

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Center which is on Cape Cod.

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And the landscape you'll
hear described in this poem

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is the landscape of Cape Cod.

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When I was there, I had this
unhealthy kind of reaction.

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I had just finished
graduate school

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and for the first time somebody
had given me some money

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and said, go ahead and write.

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And this had never
happened before.

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My reaction to this was guilt,
which I don't recommend.

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I think it's really
unproductive and stupid.

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But rather than sit around
and wallow in this feeling,

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I thought well, I'll try
to write a poem using

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some of this guilt.

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And while I was being
guilty, I thought

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of my father and his
life, and comparing it

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to my own fairly privileged
situation at the time.

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And this is what came
out of those thoughts.

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Traveling Light.

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Every restaurant
boarded up in softwood,

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bars strung with tipsy
blinkers, smudge fires

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against the dusk-like day.

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Who could have imagined
the light toppling down,

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song you can see
overall, or this salt

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breeze, vital and teary
as a drunken wake?

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The kite stores ringed with
stunted Christmas trees

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like pathetic closed umbrellas.

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This is the year we'll
trim with shells.

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The man who sells them tells us
tales of price wars over apple

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coral, fluted clams.

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His hair branches and his
skin hardens as he speaks.

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Part baobab, part pirate.

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His shells-- little bandanna
prints and green turbans--

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are lovely, or droll
might be the word,

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but tropical, not from Cape Cod.

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It was 10 years ago this season
my father died, leaving me

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odd wisdoms concerning clip
joints, Gypsies, elocution,

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and traveling light.

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I was 20, up to my elbows
in developer acid, fixative,

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a microfilm technician with
few discernible skills.

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What would he have made
of this off season resort?

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Though he never lived to
see it, I can hear him say,

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don't worry Al, if the
poetry don't go, I'll buy you

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your own beauty shop.

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Yes, with sickly pink
smells, well thumbed back

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issues of HairDo, and a
3D religious picture that

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flickered between Mary
and Jesus and tricky light

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revealing the Blessed
Mother with a beard.

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He likes scenery, Kay Francis
movies, and the fights.

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I guess, like you, I
never really knew him.

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On the last visit,
I ambled to his room

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with my dignified mini
hiked up in the back,

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flashing unintentional ass
to the joyous orderlies.

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Befuddled by dripping
liquids, screens yielding

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twitchy lights, he said, what
are we doing in this car wash?

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Then he thought he remembered
a long ago close call

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when a canvas topped jalopy
broke down in a Saratoga storm.

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His hands froze first,
then his flesh turned dense

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as a snowman's.

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Only his brain kept rolling.

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He knew he had no money.

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But the troopers took him
to a sumptuous hospital

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and his eyes grew wondrous as
he raved and praised the decor,

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the meals, you can't imagine.

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When I went to pay, the
nurses said, Mr. Fulton,

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it was a pleasure
to take care of you,

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there will be no charge.

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There will be no
charge for the light

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or the sea's skillful
flippancies with it,

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for the moon softening
the scene with

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its own peculiar politeness.

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After years of plea
bargaining with a snooty muse,

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I've landed here, where
there's nothing I dread doing.

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Gifts fall into my hands from
unindicted co-conspirators

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and suddenly all three faiths
shine their ever loving light

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on me.

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I'm free to watch the dunes take
on the chill color of shells,

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the sea threaten and
beckoned like a roof's edge,

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an absent minded thing.

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The way the tide rips
itself out sideways,

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thoughtless as a torn seam.

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And people find things
here, I've heard.

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Portuguese dolls once encased in
eerie pink and green crinolines

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swish in, their mouths
still red and pouting.

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Here on the fragile
tip of this peninsula,

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anything could return.

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I'm half prepared for hostile
mermaids, pilot whales,

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stranded miscreants
clad in moss and furs.

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I'm half prepared to see my
father, to whom the world gave

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nothing without struggle.

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Rise up, beaming anyway
upon it as if he never

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meant to let it go.

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Salt boxes appear and
disappear in the slurry fog.

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Gulls open against
the sky like books

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with blank, beautifully
demanding pages.

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And behind me the stolid
ocean slams itself on Earth

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as if to say that's
final, though it isn't.

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Behind me, the ocean
stares down the clouds,

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the little last
remaining light, as if

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to remind me of the
nothing I will always

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have to fall back on.

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Thank you.

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