WEBVTT

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I'll read-- I saw a story
about the whales migrating,

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this morning, so I'll
read my whale poem.

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This poem was printed
in The New Yorker

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and The New Yorker
copy editor had a lot

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to say about the incorrect
whale information in this poem.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So this has passed the
test of the copy editor.

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I provided evidence from the
Point Reyes Ranger Station

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that whales do mate where I
was saying that they mated,

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even though there are plastic
whales swimming around

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in this poem, too.

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But they accepted it.

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They allowed me to mix my media,
if I got the whales mating

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correctly.

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"A Foghorn."

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I'm reading this for my
father who loves the Pacific.

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And whale season
will start very soon.

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(READING) "On Sundays
in mid-winter,

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when wild iris put
their iridescent blades

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through the grasses and
yellow lupine wait to flower

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from their seven-fingered
hands, all the

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divorced Californians
start out to the Point

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with their bottled waters in
their fragile foreign cars.

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They pass the turn-off for
the hopeful murmur of beaches,

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and pass the moody grays
of cooperative farms,

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the cattle with
their useful udders

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the color of wild geranium.

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Then they park, if they can,
and descend the long steps

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by the lighthouse where the
tough crimson algae cling

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to the broken stones.

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And when they
arrive at the rail,

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they look past the cormorants,
past the Farallones to the space

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where the whales should be.

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And the split chord of
the foghorn calls to them.

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The whales are too
far to hear it.

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The whales, in their secrecy,
give off the dull sheen

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of Etruscan mirrors.

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Down the coast they travel,
and the twisted cypresses

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gather to look.

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They swim by LA, with its
nights of shining leather,

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toward the temperate waters
of Baja where they will mate.

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In pictures, they
are all smiles--

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sweet diligence, or the
weak little smile of

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exhausted history.

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Their corrugated
sides undulate as they

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play, moving in a time
both linear and cyclical.

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They all swim here, Melville's
whale, and Jonah's--

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even the hollow plaster
whale of Disney--

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for this is California.

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Surely the people crave some
blankness between sightings,

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but someone spots one every few
minutes, a heart-breaking flash,

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the cry goes out--

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each moment a contained unit--

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then the cry passes,
brief as a human life.

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They say this call is heard
in all the great systems.

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The sleepy ones will
gather at the shore

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to proclaim the glamour
of the alien sun,

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while in the nearby desert one
real solitary arranges himself

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on a pile of fronds.

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Come home, says the disembodied
voice to all of them.

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But here on the Point
the wind is fierce.

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It blows the people
to the right as they

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pose for snapshots under
the beehive-shaped, art deco

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lantern.

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And the foghorn calls
their two-toned names,

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until the names sound
interchangeable.

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John-ny!

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Mar-y!

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A major third downward accent
on the second syllable.

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The call goes out in
reverse, away from them,

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over the hugely
populated universe,

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as though it sent their
questions out for them.

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What shall we be?

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What shall we do now,
divorced from our lives,

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and from this century?

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And the land splits behind
them, the conglomerate

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cliffs letting them go, letting
the Point slide toward Alaska.

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They wait, as if at the
prow of a fatherless ship,

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leaning there.

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They have waited a long time,
they are so used to waiting.

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They have waited for
the winning number,

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or for the changes in
someone, or for the nocturne

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to rewind itself
around the spool--

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shouldn't something
have pity on them now?

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It is late; pelicans and
egrets and herons go by,

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and the foghorn
continues its anthem

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of names, only for
them of course, only

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in this human realm."

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