WEBVTT

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Some of the new
manuscript I'm working on

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continues my
obsession with time.

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And the new
manuscript seems to be

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taking the shape of
a journey, an attempt

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to return home to find a home
in time rather than in place.

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So this is the first
in a series of poems

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starting on this journey.

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It is called, "I Have Set
My Heart on the Sparrow."

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The title is taken from the
epigraph by Marcus Aurelius.

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"It is as if one set out to love
one of the sparrows flying past

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and behold, it has vanished."

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"One world is always beginning.

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The cows meet like
the burdens of sleep

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in a field, each one
bearing a white part,

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a black part of the map.

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I snow right there.

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They hardly notice
interference, memory.

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They mean to freeze with
their eyes set longingly

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on the farmhouse,
eyes like mud trying

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to say love, eyes like
cows loving a house

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or deciding smoke
from the chimney.

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Smoke begins in the belly.

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Mother and father, you are
there, there, this time,

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without me.

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I can't begin.

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All night, I listened
to one bird from my bed

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after it had rained.

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I said, imagine there
is nothing to the world

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but you and the bird.

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This one, throaty waterfall or
this small surge, this diamond,

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chipper bird.

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It sings, you listen.

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It can't conceive of you.

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You listen.

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One bubble in the
darkness, that's

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where I fell asleep, where
a language I know only

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as a language went on alone.

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The spilled connection.

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It's the life again
where God says,

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I can only use three details.

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I arrange and I arrange.

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I want to be able
to say farewell.

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I was told once what birds mean.

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Their calling is only
I'm a lark, I'm a wren,

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I'm a starling,
starling, starling.

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This is my territory.

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I dream my first memory.

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House, I tell the cows.

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I will love that bird forever."

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I secretly call that
my revenge of the birds

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poems because one of the first
things that I was told when

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I began writing seriously in
a creative writing program,

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was that I had to cut
birds out of my poems.

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So it took me many years
to earn back my right.

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And so now I'm going
at it with a vengeance.

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I wondered why for a while
they showed up so much.

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And I think that's
very common for poets.

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And so I read somewhere that
they're really a muse figure,

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and that makes a
whole lot of sense.

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And I think usually when
they do appear in my poems,

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they are the muse speaking.

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