This is the final poem.
It's the title poem from the book Pittsburgh's doing now.
I wrote this a few years ago.
I remember I had it in a folder like for a year
before I ever got really interested in what
was the first draft and then held on to it since.
Ruby for Grief.
I tend to sit here very alone.
Last night I asked a stranger if he
wanted a rubber slapped across his face.
This morning brought more or less more.
I was whistling when I ran into someone
I hadn't seen for a while, someone
I would like to think of as a brief friend,
and it seemed all the better because I was whistling.
I'm fond of the bridges the sea makes in my mind,
although far away.
Even with a shallow life before this one or a life after,
I know my life is short.
Each is.
The sea bridges such familiar territory the life makes.
The sea measures such mending I make and gives it colors.
Ruby for grief, yellow for choice,
flint green for staying awake.
One reason I live alone is the nature
of the strangers who appear in my dreams now and then.
I can make nothing of their life until they've made mine.
I find their memories in water, winter birds dipping
their heads at winter windows, and in the closest
facts of walking the streets.
The stranger last night angered me
as he refused memory, distorting mine and his.
He walked away under a few red lights until I shouted.
Little generosity unless he gets away.
I used to fly in my sleep.
The sea often appeared, but these aspects of images
have rather faded over time.
I wish they'd come back.
Water appears in simple settings.
Basins, tubs, glasses, often it seems
I'm thirsty in the dream just when a winter bird appears.
The colors the sea has given me are constant.
There's a kind of ruby girl who returns
my face about once a month.
Maybe her name is Ruby.
My sister often turns up and is as close to me
there as I want to think some future omen will be close to me
someday.
She is usually making choices for me,
defending me, or walking from one quiet hut to another.
My part in these dreams is to appear with a yellow stick,
having made my choice, and then I
make some private and selfish demand for secrecy,
threatening anyone who appears with my yellow stick.
The flint green for staying awake simply
is the color of the water lapping, lapping
under a few small bridges, the bridges in cities or towns
where there are none.
I don't like the slapping.
It makes me feel my memory is an omen.
Flint green makes me feel that if I
got up and went walking I would find
imaginary almonds everywhere.
So I remain awake, talk out loud to myself, simple things.
Ask myself for a match, wonder if someone out there
will be walking by.
If they were, would I see them?
Would they want to come in?
Sometimes I take this staying awake
and try resolving details or themes.
Like with questions, like those at the end of stories or poems
in school texts.
How are the three details of the story resolved?
Is generosity so privately handled a good thing?
What is the importance of Ruby's awkwardness when
confronted with the stranger?
Are almonds, which take the form of memories,
immersed in water a good thing?
Will the narrator ever fly again?
I'm losing it when I begin these, so I go to the window.
It would be nice if the window asked me back, turned back,
helped itself to an attitude.
God knows enough look in here during the day.
I'm that close to the street.
I could even step out, begin whistling again,
ask someone if they want a rain check on coming over.
I don't know just what I will do now.
I might wash up, I might whistle to see
if any winter birds fly nearer, try
resolving almonds or themes.
Isn't there some infinity to the generosity
of trying to tell your story?
Or better, isn't there some prior life
to telling everything this way?
Like secretly taking the smallest belonging
from a passing stranger, opening it up under an open nightlight,
the kind the night sky sometimes makes,
and ordering this belonging, giving it an attitude or omen
so some other truthful window might appear.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]