WEBVTT

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We skipped a poem,
so we're going

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to go back a couple of months.

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There's one detail,
this in contrast

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is a very quiet,
non fearful poem.

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But it will have a very quiet,
anxiety producing effect on you

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when I give you this detail
if you don't know it.

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There's a detail: 25
billion beats to each heart.

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That's the best
each heart can do.

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And our lifespan is determined
by the way we spend them.

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So a shrew at 700 beats
per minute, you can guess,

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has a much shorter life
than a whale at 15.

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Think about this, just count.

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Just count.

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Reading this very quiet poem.

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"Approaching August."

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"Approaching August night
takes on its own elegance.

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The catenary curve of snakes,
the breathing pentagonal

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shaped flowers, the shadblow
pliant and black with berries.

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Orion rises in the east
over fat green gardens,

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and all meanness is forgiven.

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We can view the river in the
amethyst hour before dark.

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25 billion beats to each heart.

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Two passengers fish, two
paddle, past the chalk caves,

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the banks of aster,
the flood plains

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dense with white
tail and beaver.

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We're lost near midnight,
a moonless summer evening,

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mid-season in our
senses, midlife.

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The sky overhead like
glitter ice, the water

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round swollen cottonwoods pulls
like tresses and torn paper.

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Today I had a
letter from France.

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"What a truly civilized
nation," my friend

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wrote as she drank her morning
coffee with thick cream

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in a country cafe near Avignon.

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"To my right a man
in a black tuxedo

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sips raspberry
liqueur and soda."

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And here on the same
latitude we lie back at dawn

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on the caving bank
of the Bitterroot.

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A shadow slips through the
silver grasses, and then

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a moth, and then the moon."