Well, I'll read this poem.
I don't go in for group activities very much,
but I play volleyball in Maine, where I live, on a team.
And it's interesting to see how the players continue
to drop out and be replaced, but that the game goes on.
This is something Kipling would have written a poem about,
in those terms, too, I think, the game goes on.
But that's what this is about, too.
It's been a pleasure to talk to some of the graduate students
here.
It seems like the community is very vital and alive,
and I'm envious of them for being here, in fact.
But I actually stole the name of a character in this poem
from the poem of a student who's in the MFA program here, Chris,
and I can't remember Chris's last name.
I just want to give him credit for that.
I read his poem, I stole the name.
Who?
[INAUDIBLE]
OK, God bless him.
May you go far, Chris.
So this poem is called Game.
On Thursday nights in spring, the volleyball game
starts up again, though all of the original players on the team
have been replaced, the way that all the cells have been replaced
in my sensitive fingertips, which once explored
the sweet, unbelievably silk periphery of Jennifer
Martin, who then surprised me, by one day simply vanishing.
Each time the ball is served to me,
I get a great constriction in my chest, afraid that I might miss.
But the ball flies up and down, and I survive.
The energy which gushes through all things, looking for a place
to stop, keeps going.
And Jennifer might be the name for all of this,
while photons, plunging into skin, the wind
stirred clover in the unknown field, the bees that sexually
harassed the flowers, the tendril of the honeysuckle
reaching for the next rung in its extension of the chain link
fence, blue of Jennifer-inflected sky,
and Jennifer alfalfa.
By the end of summer, we all will be a slightly darker shade
of brown, as if the skin remembered,
a few more tiny stretch marks pleated at our eyes,
as if we each were making a serious collection
of the kind of things that change is gradually made of.
When my turn comes to serve, I hold the white ball in my hands
as long as possible, letting it grow rounder,
making everybody wait until they get impatient,
pissed off, loud, noticing the Jennifer-shaped cloud that
slides across the sun, above the field of sparkling Jennifer.
I hold it in my hand as long as possible.
The birds are speeding overhead, and the unmowed field
is foaming at the mouth with flowers.
Thank you.