WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.810 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.810 --> 00:00:02.910 align:middle line:90%
"The Poems I Have Lost."

00:00:02.910 --> 00:00:06.330 align:middle line:84%
"She said to take
the L train, too.

00:00:06.330 --> 00:00:07.980 align:middle line:90%
I know where I left them--

00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:11.790 align:middle line:84%
on the floor of her apartment
with five locks on 13th

00:00:11.790 --> 00:00:14.880 align:middle line:84%
Street, Somewhere
Else City, USA.

00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:18.270 align:middle line:90%
I don't think I'll ever go back.

00:00:18.270 --> 00:00:22.620 align:middle line:84%
A young couple picked me up just
east, miles out of Asheville.

00:00:22.620 --> 00:00:24.900 align:middle line:84%
Had just started a
poem, too, and we

00:00:24.900 --> 00:00:27.570 align:middle line:84%
stopped and smoked
at a roadside table

00:00:27.570 --> 00:00:30.210 align:middle line:84%
at the edge of June
tobacco fields.

00:00:30.210 --> 00:00:35.430 align:middle line:84%
I lost them somewhere between
there and the Atlantic Ocean.

00:00:35.430 --> 00:00:38.160 align:middle line:84%
I wrote Duffy a long
rambling letter.

00:00:38.160 --> 00:00:40.140 align:middle line:84%
Called it a "Poem
from Nashville"

00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:45.060 align:middle line:84%
because I got lonesome for
sunsets in Colorado springtime,

00:00:45.060 --> 00:00:47.790 align:middle line:84%
and then dropped the
letter in the mailbox.

00:00:47.790 --> 00:00:52.920 align:middle line:84%
I wonder if it ever found
her in Juneau, Alaska.

00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:56.010 align:middle line:84%
The last thing I remember
was leaning into the roots

00:00:56.010 --> 00:00:57.450 align:middle line:90%
of a pinyon tree.

00:00:57.450 --> 00:00:59.790 align:middle line:84%
It wasn't the horse
that had thrown me.

00:00:59.790 --> 00:01:03.120 align:middle line:84%
It wasn't McAllister
either, who owned the horse.

00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:09.360 align:middle line:84%
It was all that damn beer we
had been drinking all afternoon.

00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:11.880 align:middle line:84%
I got a letter from
St. Paul, Minnesota,

00:01:11.880 --> 00:01:14.730 align:middle line:84%
inviting me up
there to read poems.

00:01:14.730 --> 00:01:18.780 align:middle line:84%
I fell off the plane in
Denver, lost my ticket and most

00:01:18.780 --> 00:01:23.730 align:middle line:84%
of my poems, but managed to hold
on enough to a few remaining

00:01:23.730 --> 00:01:24.960 align:middle line:90%
things.

00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:28.080 align:middle line:84%
Memories, I guess
they are, crowd me

00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:29.910 align:middle line:90%
because of all the signals.

00:01:29.910 --> 00:01:34.590 align:middle line:84%
I've missed the poems that
keep coming back in pieces--

00:01:34.590 --> 00:01:37.590 align:middle line:84%
fragments remain
with me, of course.

00:01:37.590 --> 00:01:41.550 align:middle line:84%
I touch the bare skeletons,
smell the old things,

00:01:41.550 --> 00:01:46.230 align:middle line:84%
and see new visages
past many, many times.

00:01:46.230 --> 00:01:48.500 align:middle line:90%
Those are enough."

00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:49.000 align:middle line:90%