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And the last poem, it's
called "There Was A Storm."

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Last winter-- the storm
involved is the big snowstorm

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they had last
winter in the east.

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And during that snowstorm
my uncle, whose nickname

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was Bunny, had died.

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And my mother called
me to tell me about it.

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And the two stories of the big
snowstorm and my uncle's death

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got confused on the telephone.

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And the poem really is
about that confusion.

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"There was a storm so hard I
can only imperfectly imagine it.

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But my mother on the
telephone loses her grief

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for a moment to say how
the houses by the shore

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lost resistance, how the
snow was colorless and empty,

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fluid as running water.

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She pauses over the wires.

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'Where your brother
lives,' she says.

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The ocean ran right up his
street and took a house away

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and our uncle Bunny died.

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My mother breaks down,
comparing and choosing,

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then lost in the thousand
pretexts of words--

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Uncle Bunny, who would not be
touched by anything but snow--

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don't get me wrong,
he died a fat man

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of a heart attack
and far inland,

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not even shoveling snow.

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And now snow, by
chance, covers him.

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He was a fat man a
long time and would not

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allow a hand to touch, not
even to shake his hand,

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his giant overworked heart.

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My mother lost her words.

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It was small, a family expected
death and little sentiment

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around for a bachelor
who would not be touched.

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For a moment my mother
did, then let him go."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thanks.

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The next reader will
be Criss Cannady.