This next poem is called I Met My Wife.
Everything I say in it is true about how I met her.
I met her in Amherst, Massachusetts,
which, as you know, is the home of Emily Dickinson.
I Met My Wife.
"I met my wife in a bar
You could throw a Frisbee from
And hit Emily Dickinson's grave
Which would be uncool and not.
Until that night,
My whole life had been a conference
Where voices amiably disagreed
Until paralysis ensued.
When I looked in her face,
Something, actually, for the first time, spoke,
Saying home is where you've never lived,
Not yet.
What else?
Before she said it, I knew her Old Testament name.
Home, as everyone knows, is hard.
In each room,
The most terrible moments keep lasting
Obscure, green, velvet, continual past light
From under every doorway pours into the hallway.
You are drawn to enter in fear.
It's horrible and good to go through each door in every room,
To keep standing in that green light,
To spread your arms and take it into your fur.
No fantasy is ever better.
Still alive, you open your eyes
And go back down the stairs
To find the other in the kitchen, stirring something.
Someone says, have a cookie.
It won't kill you."
[LAUGHTER]