WEBVTT

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I have written, to
my recollection,

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two poems in my adult
life which remember back.

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There are some poets
whose entire work

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is made of remembering things
that happened a long time ago.

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And perhaps because I
have quite a bad memory

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I have only done this twice.

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This is one of them, and
it dates me quite nicely.

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It comes from the
first job I had

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after graduating from college.

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And the title is 1973.

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The one thing that
those of you who are not

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quite so nicely dated as I
might need to know, is it

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goes back to a time when cars
had manual chokes that you had

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to pull out on cold mornings.

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So for those of you who have
never met a manual choke,

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that's what I'm talking
about at the beginning.

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And I'm not eating
artichokes for breakfast.

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The other 70's
references, it doesn't

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matter if you don't get
them, but that one mattered.

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[LAUGHS]

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1973.

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That winter, we
took turns stepping

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into the barely-started
mornings to turn ignitions

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until they caught, complaining
roughly of the cold.

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Then ran back to finish
our coffee, cereal, toast,

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while chokes pulled full
out, exhaust poured white

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across the glass
that kept us warm.

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We'd named them.

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Big Mama Tomato.

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Snooze.

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Each was our first, as we
were each other's first,

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in the farmhouse for rent
for the first time in 40

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years, surrounded by soybeans.

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We'd whited over the pink room
the son had painted when he

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returned crazed with Vietnam.

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We'd made the man come back
for the thin black lab left

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chained in the yard.

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The 13 cats stayed,
soon more, all wild.

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Our own would come
to the window by way

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of a three-story oak and
moss-shingled porch roof

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to mew us awake and
them in every day.

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Kesey and Mountain Girl,
scrawling their signatures,

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snow mornings on the quilt.

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We nailed planks from the
old barns onto the walls

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by our bed, scraped a dozen
layers of peeling paper

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from the next room.

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The older they got,
the more lovely.

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That one we made
cheerful yellow,

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where I wrote the wildly
sad poems of the very young.

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When we got to the farm,
you took a tractor.

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I loaded my van with sacks
of produce and drove off.

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Kip supervised us all,
the Peace Corps vet,

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the kids just out of school.

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Picking his peaches that
summer, the best work I've done.

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The closest to
paradise I've seen.

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Ladder propped in his trees.

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All sold now.

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Gone.

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His farm, the one we lived at,
the ground fall cider, the cars.

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Us too, of course,
long shaken free,

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though I still cook bluefish the
way you taught me, and carrots.

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I thought I would
love you forever,

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and a little I may in
the way I still move

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toward a crate, knees
bent, or reach for a man

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as one might stretch
for the three or four

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fruit that lie in the sun
at the top of the tree.

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Too ripe for any
moment but this,

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they open their
skin at first touch,

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yielding sweetness,
sweetness and heat.

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And in me, each time
since, the answering, yes.

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