This is my last poem for the evening.
But I want to thank the university
for once bringing me out.
And also the university supporting the Poetry Center,
which has been around for a very long time because I could
tell from the rug in my room.
[LAUGHTER]
You have to do something about that rug.
I'm over at the guest house, is that what it--
looks like the fingerprints of hell on the ground.
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
It's a poem called "Oranges."
It's about your first girlfriend.
That experience when you go out and you just
don't have enough money.
And looking around this room, I say, yeah,
you guys don't have enough money on your dates.
So you're always like a little bit short.
When I was a young person, candy bars cost a nickel,
and Dean [? Taynor ?] remembers when they cost a penny.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
So it-- and so kids are really, really surprised
they cost a nickel, really?
And sometimes I'm described somewhere
as one of the younger poets in the Norton Anthology
of Younger Poets.
And kids ask me, well, what do the older ones look like?
And--
[LAUGHTER]
I'm the younger one.
I can tell you they look really bad.
"Oranges."
"The first time I went out with a girl
I was 13 years old, cold, and weighted down
with two oranges in my jacket.
It was December.
Frost cracking beneath my steps.
My breath before me, then gone as I walked toward her house.
The one whose porch light burned yellow night and day
in any weather.
A dog barked at me until she came out pulling at her gloves,
face bright with makeup.
I smiled, touched her shoulder, and led her down the street,
across a used car lot and a line of newly planted trees
until we were breathing before a drugstore.
We entered the drugstore, the tiny bell bringing a sales lady
down a narrow line of goods.
I turned to the candies, tiered like bleachers,
and asked what she wanted.
Light in her eyes.
A smile starting at the corners of her mouth.
I fingered a nickel in my pocket,
and when she lifted a chocolate candy
bar that cost a dime, heck no, I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from my pocket, then the orange,
and sat them both quietly on the counter.
When I looked up, the sales lady's eyes
met mine and held them, knowing very well what
it was all about, love, I mean.
Outside the drugstore, a few cars hissing past,
fog hanging like old coach between the trees.
I took my girl's hand in mine for two blocks,
then released it to let her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange that was so bright against the gray
of December that from some distance someone
might have thought I was making a fire in my hands."
Thank you very much.
OK.
[APPLAUSE]