And this poem is called "Tiger Beetle."
Thanks for listening to these.
"Tiger Beetle."
"Discussing my Adderall prescription with my doctor,
And pondering what it would be like to be able to concentrate
On the important thing.
The concept of justice, the rise of fascism, lawn care,
Whatever my doctor is saying at this exact moment,
And to not feel my thoughts surging forward,
Like, I wonder who invented the ball jar.
Can a blue whale's heartbeat really be
heard from over 2 miles away?
Last week, I saw a documentary on the tiger beetle
And it moved so fast while hunting, so fast
It renders itself temporarily unable to see.
It has to stop to refocus its eyes.
And I thought, yes, yes, that is exactly how my brain moves.
Many times, it has moved so fast
I can no longer see what was in front of me,
When what was in front of me was America,
The price of groceries,
My wife saying I love you,
And me saying, hey, did I leave the stove on?
Is snickersnee a real word?
Why was Waterloo a disaster for Napoleon?
I should remember that.
I studied history in college and was amazed by the magnitude of
Well, everything and how when viewed
from far enough in the future,
None of us seemed random anymore.
The decline of an empire,
The fires in the West,
The floods right here in Vermont,
Where there are 16 species of tiger beetle,
Each one rapidly diminishing in number.
And though it runs so quickly,
Traversing distances 120 times the length of its body
in under a second,
There are still some things no one can outrun.
Be still, little tiger beetle, I think.
But the beetle is electric, which reminds me,
Isn't it messed up that Edison also invented the electric chair
and once electrocuted an elephant?
The motivation was capitalism: to prove
his competitor's product was a more lethal conductor
of electricity.
I'd rather be an orchestra conductor
than a lethal conductor.
And I think I could do it.
I could wear a tux.
I could stand before the audience enthralled.
I too could look elegant If I lost maybe 10 pounds.
I could wave my arms as if I were
the one making the music move,
As if I could see the trumpet blast and viola sighs,
Fluttering above me, every sound flexing in unison,
As if connected the way our disparate histories
are connecting right now.
And I'm pointing to each individual note saying,
Go here, go there, louder for the people in the back
And the tiger beetles saying, man, I'm
just trying to catch a moth or an ant for dinner,
But I keep moving too fast.
And I say, no, it's not that we're moving too fast.
It's that time is accelerating and life is too fast.
But the beetle is a blur already in the future
or lost in my past.
And either way, it's gone.
The best living things are always leaving this world.
And my doctor is waving her hand in front of my face,
Asking about my blood pressure,
The amount of sleep I get each night,
My anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10,
Asking, Matthew, are you listening?
Matthew, are you OK?
Are you still with us?
Are you even here right now?"
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]