WEBVTT

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And one more poem from this
book called Link Chain, which

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in a way is an analogy to me.

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To that time of my
life that's gone.

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Other kind of place names that
are around East Tennessee,

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so Gainesville,
Tennessee, Chestnut Ridge,

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places like that.

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A guy named Philbeck,
I used to be an acolyte

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with in the good old days.

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Link Chain, Palm Sunday.

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Banana leaves loll
in the breaklight.

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Back home on Ravine Street,
25 years ago, Philbeck and I

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would count the crosses,

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arrange the pins on
their silver plate,

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and bank on a full house.

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The palm crosses,
tiny and off green

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against their purple
cloth, are stacked

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like ricks with a match flame.

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11 o'clock. I take a
cross and two pins.

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One for the cross and
one again, for the heart.

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On the front seat
of a yellow coach,

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pistol red at the wheel,
10 miles this side

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of the Gainesville
on US 11W, I'd

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lay my body down in
Tennessee for the first time.

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The second time I'd pick
a tree, black cherry that

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grows on the North
side of Chestnut Ridge

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and looks out over
the Cumberland.

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I'd build a floor and face West.

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For number three, I'd float
in a boat downriver,

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whatever river and be a leaf.

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Circle by circle, link
chain and hair breadth,

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I'm bound to the oak mulch.

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Those leaves stuffed
in their crocker sacks,

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my brother and I were sent
for each weekend in autumn,

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In Moody's woods, to
drag back up Hog Hill

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and feed the shredder with.

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Later, confettied and packed
tight in their little mounds,

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they warm the milk wood
and the slip stalk.

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Later still, and less
coarse, they're

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warming me, bone stock and
finger peg, the cold room.

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From this pocket to
that pocket, by coin

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whose slot in the crossed box was
cut 38 years ago and cut well,

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I roll through the world.

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Peter's pence for the red clay,
defrocked and worn smooth.

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The payment in someone's hand.

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Lord of the Anchorite,
windblown bird,

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dangle your strings and hook me.

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I am in the gleam
in your good eye.

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I am your ticket. Take me up
and drop me where I belong.

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Each tree I look at
contains my coffin.

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Each train brings
it closer home.

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Each flower I cut, I cut
for a plastic vase askew

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on the red dirt.

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The oak trees whisking
their wash in the May wind.

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Each route I
uncover, uncovers me.

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Below, 19 bypass swings
straight to the state line,

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5 miles North.

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Virginia, across the bridge.

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Each car is the car that brings
that tree to Earth, the Earth

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to the Earth again.

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Big sister, hair heaped like a
fresh grave, turns in my arms

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as my arms turn.

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Her fingers cool tubers
against my skin, as we slide.

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Slide to the music,
humming an old tune.

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Knee touching knee.

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Step, two, three.

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Step, two, three under a
hard hatful of leaves.

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The grass with its one
good limb holding the beat,

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a hint of impending form.

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It gathers.

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It reaches back.

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It is caught up.

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