WEBVTT

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A brief pause for mopping.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Everybody knows the bad
stuff about old age.

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It's kind of out there.

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But how many know
the joys of it?

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Well, this poem is just
a little short of that.

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It's about those joys,
the letting it go,

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and as the title says,
"Freeing the Hands."

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Up there on the wall, this is
for any of the young people

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in this audience.

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Thank you, by the way, any of
you from the honors class, which

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was an honor to visit today.

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Had a great time with you guys.

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If you've only seen digital
time and you think it's linear,

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that's the clock I'm
talking about, OK?

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Freeing the Hands."

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And it was all askew

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Numbers scattered

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A rock slide of lost count

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And the little hand that once
circled ours like a chained dog

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And the long hand
that kept pointing

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to the minutes, useless now

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And the lock unsecured the door

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Flat in the wet grass

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Torn from its hinges

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Everything a ruin,

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Strewn, the scatter of an old
design on a smashed white plate

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In all this shattered pattern,
unreadable what came apart

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What opened

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Everything spilt, pouring

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O, the flood of it!

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The old bridge over it

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Shaking the long river of it

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Heading out past the old boxes

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The last algorithm

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The laughter of birds at the
absurd processing of words

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Imagine

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Something deletes the
period from every sentence

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The judge has fled from
the bench to the mountains

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The streams are running cold and
pure, pouring with melting snow

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Spring is forcing the rock
to relent along whatever

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flaw opens a path for the flood

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The jack is out of the box

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The genie is out of the bottle

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A trout leaps in the
stream with a flung

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dazzle of sun-filled drops

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As the spring
pours from the rock

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Opening, error, era to air

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Freeing the hands that
once forever circled

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the round, imprisoned
face of time

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[APPLAUSE]

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