OK, last poem.
This is a poem that also has a little bit of a history.
And it comes from the CB era.
I didn't write it then.
It was written very recently.
But you can tell now that things percolate
in my consciousness for quite a while,
and then something kicks in, poem results.
So 1979, a record came out called "Convoy."
And that started everybody going down to RadioShack,
getting a Citizens Band radio and hogging up the frequencies.
This is about to happen again.
They're about to-- I don't know if you're aware of this,
but Motorola has a new radio.
The FCC, first of all, has finally
done something for the people.
They're selling off the broadcast band
to all these corporations.
But the new family channel opens up this spring,
and Motorola has a new radio receiver.
It's $179 a pair.
And you can talk up to two miles.
You've got somebody to talk with all the time.
You can talk with them on this, and you
don't have to pay cellular rates or hog up your telephone.
So everybody's going to be abusing this about next year
this time.
So it'll be like this.
But this comes from listening to CB radio in the early 80s
and hearing a woman in San Jose say to--
I couldn't hear the other part of the conversation.
I could just hear hers and that was always interesting.
So you say you're a Buddhist, huh?
Well, tell me this.
Are you wearing boots?
You know.
So--
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
She actually said that.
And I love that.
You get a lot of that kind of stuff on the internet.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
I love-- when things like this are new
and everybody's just in there, and they
don't know what they're doing, and you know,
and they say things like that.
The Buddhist Way Out West Reflects on Boots.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
"The loveliness of poems is that they keep.
The loveliness of lives is that they don't.
The rising tide one-ups the tide that falls almost.
You come to me in nothing but boots, and body, mind.
Here blue matches everything you wear or even think
in this improvised December of cold feet,
of wrinkling cold, twice iced, now tough as lust.
Your soulful earrings' blue goes smoothly
with the blurred blue of our clouded afternight.
Up one-way streets, desire has snipped us down and wired us
to this alternating force for keeps.
And yet who knows what anguished tide will swoop tomorrow
up and take us out so quickly.
Even poetry, our tree-root deep identity,
can't ride time's wave enthroned.
The mystery of love can't hide for long either.
Come melt my night.
Forget today.
Let tides and lives beyond their drunken way peel
off your sea and sky-dye duds.
Unstrap your blues and stay a while.
But don't you, don't you, don't you touch them boots."
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLES]
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I'll be outside, I think, at the book table.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]