WEBVTT

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So the next little section
of poems I'm going to read,

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they're in Ancient Light.

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But they're many places
around in the book

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and they're also
very, very short.

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So for me to try to
find the pages as I

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have them written here instead.

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And this is something
that I've been at work at.

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And I thought at first
this was a series of poems

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and they're all called "the
way we love something small."

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And then I realized it's not
a series, it's an aesthetic.

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It's a way of engaging
with the world.

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And I believe it comes out
of the haiku aesthetic.

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And it also comes out of
the Anishinaabe dream song

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aesthetic.

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And so part of what
it does is it just

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asks us, as poetry does, to
pay attention to the world,

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to look closely.

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And I feel that when we do that,
then it's this reciprocity.

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We get something back and that
something back that we get

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transforms us.

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So these are also poems a
little bit about transformation.

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The way we love something small.

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Inky leaf, shadows on snow.

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Each animal track a
hollow, trace of bird feet,

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double oval of deer, the glyphs
we make, the ones we follow.

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