 This is the first time we've been in a church on Sunday for many years. Hi, church. For anybody who doesn't know, I'm Mary Elder Jacobson, and this has worked out loud. This is our third Sunday afternoon reading series for this year. It's our final reading for this fall. And we have been so happy to have our other leaders, Jane Shore, Howard Norman, Allison Freyne, and James Cruz. And today we're incredibly honored to have two accomplished individuals on many levels, Greg Delanti and Madeleine McUnion. The curators of Art at the Kent, Del Amlin, Allison Evans, and David Sheets for their support, and all the volunteers really at the Kent and at the Old West Church for everything that goes into making these two spaces alive and productive. And I particularly want to thank Allison Evans, who's been my co-curator this year for Words Out Loud. She's right there. And I'd like to thank you to Greg Abbott for his radio show on WGDR. He's recording the audio of all three of the readings, and he's going to end up having those online. We'll try to put that on the Kent site to let people know when that's up and you can listen. And also today we have Orca Media filming this reading. And we're grateful to Barathon Books, who made books available for sale at the Kent. And we have a really special announcement that Greg Delanti's very new book, Selected Dick Delanti, which is really due out about October 27th in Hardback. Barathon was able to get it from his publisher, Undyne Limited, yesterday. So we have that at the Kent, and it's a beautiful look. And it's at $19. Cheap. That's my $19. That's our good. And this is our beautiful Z-fold program designed by Linda Moravli of Ravenmark. And it has a little bio of each of the authors. It would be impossible to put all of the prizes and honors and accomplishments of Greg and Malin on a little program. And before, and I'll probably say it again, to me this building that we're in, the Old West Church is like a pole. It has shape and form and repetition. It has good lines. It makes room for different perspectives and different emotions over time. It was built to serve many different people with box pews that encourage interconnection and sharing. And each box offering a different perspective within the same space. Like the Old West Church, which looks one way on the front, but another way on the back, the best poles provide more than one way of looking at everything. They encourage the reader or listener to interact on different levels and to be in touch with our human nature in response to personal, familial, interpersonal, and environmental matters. Greg Delanti is a creator of this type of poetry. Through both his writing and his dedication to environmental activism, he sheds light on our multi-dimensional, round, not flat, earth, showing us up close the issues we must make time to pay attention to. From the nature around us, to the climate crisis we are within, to the climate within each and every one of us, to the full range of our human emotions. Please welcome multi-dimensional, forward-thinking and far-reaching poet Greg Delanti. The lawn of a fawn here to watch the town. As it happens, I'm going to start with sort of a religious poem. I'm an unbeliever myself, though I remain kind of open, but not calibrized. As I said at a job, it is the first time I have been in a church on a Sunday for a very long time. When I'm glad to be here, thank you for inviting me. When I was quite up in Ireland, it was at Martin Singh to enter a Protestant church. That could mean we didn't enter, and it's no gain as little boys, you know what I mean? It's terrible, it's stupid, ridiculous. Do you understand me? But if I was back, no, when I was growing up I became really a Martin Singh. It's stupid, very, very extraordinary, and we would be scared inside and sneaking and we'd be scared. The first story, the second story, it's from a book called The Greek Intelligent Book 17. It's supposed to be translations, but it's not, they're all my own poems, and it's pretending. It's book 17, there's 16 books in the original, and they're all made of characters. It's supposed to pertain for the moment, so they're going to be explained too much, but they're all, well, they are all made, and they're not going to name the names. And the first story, short, only. The email telling a friend, we're not too bad considering the state of the world crosses the Atlantic with the touch of a key. The leaves of an evergreen blow, like a shoal of emerald fish, return into the same place. A caramel in his styled robe peaks, pecks the fever. The bells of the Angelus ring from St. Joseph's. The Angel of the Lord declares unto Mary, the infant god of my childhood is back on earth again. The one I'd cease to believe in. The lifeboat that keeps believers afloat. In the storm of being here, issue tickets to the Hereafter. Ever since that garden episode, the tall tale of our banishment, concocted by some storyteller who'd be so close, we've taken it for gospel, would say, Look around you now, the hold, the garden. And I'm kind of going to go back to the early poems now, and then come back full, certainly. And to a poem I wrote after my father died, and very in my early 20s. And I'm going to go through the book as chronologically, you know, so I just read bits and pieces from us. They're all short poems. In Toronto, again, very six or eight like one. Even the friendiest, most vulnerable creatures are equipped with devices to outwit death. The night moth blends into its surroundings. Light and colored, it conceals itself on back. Other pictures down the colors of a wasp. Food and predators into believing they can sting. But how could your father, out with death's grasp, snatched forever and too soon, under a stacked wing, always out when they open, without sting, are cunning. I was only in my 20s when I wrote that. I'm nearing my father's age, now he died. And, strange. I went to work with my mother now. It was an outside deal in case a bolt of lightning hits me from hand in. My mother, I had jobs, you know, the way one has all his jobs as a child in the house. One of my jobs was to trade the eye of a needle from my mother. Because they were all a bit blind. You know, my father and my brother, they were getting red eyes. So that was my, and there's a poem in this. There's a term on the dawn. On the dawn means don't serve, not good at school. And I wasn't good at school. I mean, I don't mean good in the modern sense. I mean, I was slow. They taught him, so I couldn't spell. Do you understand? And that time, I had dyslexia, but that time we were just lazy. Anyway, I don't need to go into this. Can you hear me okay? Is that okay? Can you hear me? A little louder. A little louder. Maybe I should. Pat, that's just for recording. All right, all right. Oh, I thought this was a loudspeaker. Excuse me. Okay. I thought I'd always use my stage voice. To my mother Eileen. I'm threading the eye of the needle for you again. That is my specially appointed task. My gift that you gave me. Ma, watch me slip this camel of wards through. Yes, rich we are still. Even if your needlework has long since gone with the rag and ball man. And Dan never came home one day, or Dan. Walk, walk, walk. Lose yourself and walk. That's what he'd say. Okay, okay. Ma, listen. I can hear the sticks of our fire spit like corn turning into popcorn with the brown insides of rotten teeth. We sit in our old sleeve niche house. Norman is just born. He's in the pen. I raise the needle to the light and lift the thread to stiffen the limp wards. I pair through the eye, focus, put everything out of my head. I shut my right eye and thread. I'm imparted now. A lightly lad instead of the Omadon at Dread School. I have the eye. Haven't I? The knack on Prince Trevor. I missed it. That's right. Concentrate, concentrate. And off yack-a-dee-yack. There, there, ma. Look, here's the threaded needle back. Can you hear me now? I'm exhausted out there. I feel like Arson Wends and Starter Moby Dick, which was actually done in Cork, by the way. There was that speech, that marvellous speech that was actually set in Yol, which is spelled Y-O-U-G-H-A-L, just in case. They were trying to go there. A political poem, an overtly political poem. This was a description originally I got. It turned out that actually, to his description was, I didn't know this, but by Charles Sinek, I overheard, I came into a conversation on the public radio, and I heard him describing, it was during the bombing of Belgrade many years ago now. Seems like many years ago anyway. And he was describing how he was talking to his family. He was from, Charles Sinek deported from Belgrade, and he was describing how they were describing what was happening on the phone. Do you understand? And then I got a poem out of it. As it happened, I found out later, and he saw it, he got a kick out of it. Yeah, that's a good poem, he says. And I said, sure, it's a good poem. International call. A hand holds a receiver holds a top story window in a darkening city. The phone is the black, old heavy type. From outside, what can we make of such an event? The hand, which seems to be a woman's, holds the phone away from her lover, refusing to let him answer his high-powered business call. More likely, a mother has got one more sky-high phone bill, and in a tantrum warns her phone-happy son she'll toss the contraction. A denigrated widow, having cracked a number to the afterlife, holds the receiver out for the ghost of her lately deceased husband. He's wary of heaven and wants to hear dusk boards, particularly the excited choir of city stylings. It's always dusk now, but the receiver isn't held out to listen to the boards of the earth from heaven. It's the black ear and mouth in the hand of a woman as she asks her emigrated sisters and brothers in a distant country if they can hear the straffing and those muffled thuds, how the last thud made nothing of the hospital where they were slapped into life. The hand withdraws, the window bands closed, the city is shut out. Inside now, the replaced phone represses a moan. Its air to the cradle listens for something approaching from far off, 93. This is kind of a popular poem in the sense that it gets anthologised a lot. What's it named? Garrison Keeler and none of those programmes and so forth. Billy. But it's from the first poem from a book that I wrote, poems to a child before and after and his mother, of course. Do you understand? And so this is an early one, The Alien. All the terms are correct and so forth. I just want to be conscious of the time. 15 more minutes. I try and go under so that I feel virtuous. I never feel virtuous. I'm back again. Sorry, The Alien. I'm looking at the ultrasound. Well, I was reading the last poem with the phone. Of course, they were in the days when nobody had mobile phones. Not so long ago, really. It's extraordinary. But anyway, The Alien looking at the ultrasound. I'm back again, scrutinising the milky way of your ultrasound. I'm scanning the dark matter. There's nothingness. Back now the head say is chock-a-block with squawks and quarks, gravitons and gravitini, photons and 14-ohs. Or sprout who are there inside the spacecraft of your matter. The time capsule of this print-out. Horralling and whirling towards us. It's all daft on this earth. Or alien who act in the heavens. Or Martian or little green man who are anxious to make contact. To ask diverse questions about the heaven you hail from. To discuss the whole shebang of the beginning and end. The pre-big bang on time before you forget the why and lie of thy first place. And our friend to say welcome. That we mean no harm. We die for you even. That we pray you're not here to subdue us. That we put away our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share our world with you. Little big head. If only you stay. Short energy to his mother. Makes life. The present. It's eight lines. Seven lines. I won't lie in the church. Sparrows mostly. But chickadees. Cardinals. Blue jays. Wild canaries. Feed our day on our board house stairs. Sunflower seeds. Beautiful black tears. Your father gave us only a year ago. He is dead now. How are we to know? Snow is a white sheet laid silently upon the body of the earth. How the dead live on. I was dreading this was going to happen actually. I haven't read from this book before. I just got it myself. But I just noticed a typo in the middle of that poem. It says beautiful back tears. Beautiful black tears. There's a, I'm just trying to put, about proofing. There's a proofing demon that turns up in the middle of the night after you do the proofs again and again and again. And he goes around with the changes, don't you know what I mean? Loose strife. Another political poem. You know what loose strife is, don't you? This was called, this was in the Atlantic and it was called an American sonnet. And I can never understand why it was an American sonnet. Except that perhaps the only thing that makes it a sonnet as an American sonnet was that it is 14 lines. But there's nothing else. There's no lying, no nothing. Do you know what I mean? You have become your name. Loose strife. Carried on sheep. Spurting up over ballast. A cure brought across the deep to treat wounds. Soothe trouble. There have been others like you. The rhododendron. The cat tails that you in your turn overrun. Voices praise your magenta spread. Your ability to propagate by seed, by skin, by root. And how you adjust to life. To soil. Spreading your glory across the earth. Even as you kill by boat, by air, by land or before you. The hardy iris. The rare orchids. The spawning ground of fish. You'll overtake the earth and destroy even yourself. Or loose strife. Purple plague. Beautiful us. I was also kind of putting on the US there as well. I shouldn't say those things, should I? You knew that already. And this is a poem from Mark. There are translations in this book as well. And I am an activist and I actually, in my life, I... I don't have a car. I give up the car. So we had to get a loan of a car to get here today. Big treat to go driving in the countryside. Except we got last. Another story. And I cycle everywhere during the winter to say my school and stuff. And the house is fossil fuel. There's no fossil fuels. I'm off oil and gas. So you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. Well, you probably have doing it. But it's important to me. And I've started... I keep doing activist things and so forth. I would build a cabin outside the White House. Those years ago, it gives the tar in those almost healthy in this. This is written by Sean O'Rear Dawn, but it's in Gaelic. So I'll just read the translation. And there's a name mentioned here. He was from Carpegan, fabulous poet. He was the first poet really who brought modernism into the Irish language. And there's a term here. And on the guide is just the valley of the mad, which is an actual valley in Kerry. I have a host now in Kerry too. But this is where they sent mad people. Mad people. You know what I mean? People who they said were mad. Which is going to be different. Apathy is out. There's not a fly, moth, bee. Man or woman created by God whose welfare is not our responsibility. To ignore their predicament isn't all. There's not a mad man in Glow-Nagalt. We shouldn't sit with and keep company since he's sick in the head on our behalf. There's not a place, stream or bush. However remote or a flight stone, far south, east or west, that we shouldn't consider with affection and empathy. No matter how far South Africa, no matter how distant the moon, they're part of us by right. There's not a single spot anywhere we're not a part of. We issue from everywhere. We're going to go into more recent poems and then leave you. Five moments. We're just trying to judge it. There might be only ten seconds under. 215. The Traveller's Grace. This is by Greg Orris. I won't go into it but there are points of my own name or other friends or people I like. Like there's one to Galway here. Madeline was very friendly with Galway. And there's one for David. David Budwell also. Lois is there. Anyway, I don't know. I get a chance to read him. Nothing like landing in a foreign city early in the morning. Preferably a weekday hobbub. Everyone going about their business lost in themselves. Not a thought of how strange, farmed, alien their lives are. How abnormal to think it normal to find ourselves on a spinning ball reeling around a star a thousands of miles per hour from who knows where to who knows where. How outlandish. I am one of the sacred dead released from the underworld of the mundane. The banal. Behold the normal. I read the winner. We have Greek anthology names. Panos, Canelius. It was just a way of acknowledging Galway and David. The winners. 6 line poem. 5 lines. The blue bottle reigns supreme now over the kingdom of a cactus. It doesn't matter to the fly if it's a cow, rat, salmon, human or ass. The blue bottle is a glimmering gem not on deaths, but on lives dying. I had a great friend. Somebody might have known him. Ed Epstein. Who died of lancimus. So this is a short poem on that. Towards the end. I'm not used to this book yet. The great thing is that I don't have to rifle through different books. I'm just a little bit of an allergy to a friend without Simon's. Your memory was dispatched ahead of you to the land of Arcus. The spool of all you are to yourself, a rest, though not to us. This is as good as addressing the dead. Your body's a blood home being the saint lost at that last river. dumb but tell menesmini are the boss of leafy or whatever god your final host that my heart's a clenched fist you are a man alive, dearly missed and then I'm just going to finish up with two short poems um umbilical it makes a reference to the um the arenas or the the the furies at the end which are also called you ever so kind sarcastically um here we go umbilical it's a sonnet a natural son you bike most everywhere this is myself of course um umbilical you bike most everywhere these days wary of your part in the latest war the slaughter of innocence the various wily ways you've grown used to complicity's feather the gas pump is an umbilical cord sucking the life out of exhausted terra mater you read about leaders ready to award the future the future and mammon her body smother her in her own fumes you know the reward the faith of those who kill their mothers remember ristis you translated to humankind down through the arenas the avenging daughters driving tormenting ristis I'll have his mind no escaping the furies now the ever so kind um and I'm going to finish up with a kind of a hope for a poem and of course the leaders there are the politicians and I'm very glad to be reading with Madeline who I've always admired and um I even ran in one of the elections one time when you were um canvassing with uh Peter Clavel and we walked into a dime I ran anyway I won't go into it no but it was very nice no I won't go into me running you know what I mean it's kind of funny but um it's a short poem and thank you for listening I never thought I'd be on a pulpit on a sunday I certainly my modern father and all the teachers wouldn't have thought of it patient the snow has melted clean off the mountain it's winter still yet another indication that Gaia is in trouble that things aren't sound the rocky mountaintop shines like the broad head of a woman after chemo who wills herself out of her hospital bed to take in the trees the squares the commotion around town sip beer in a dive smile at the child ogling her shiny head wishing it didn't take all this dying to love life thank you very much I was there I guess they're arguing about not the thousands there were but I was there and um I was staying with my homemade sign that I made which I had thought long and hard about what Fraser image might speak to the many different issues for many different women uh and in the end my sign said Vermont let's lift all women up and the word painted on a cardboard golden dome with series because aren't we lucky to have our symbol in Vermont be a female in the highest place at the state house the crowd was very thick I couldn't move an inch it was shoulder to shoulder sign to sign but when Madeline came up to speak I found I was actually able to move forward and then when she quoted a poem by Emily Dickinson I was able to move forward a little more and then months later she read in Randolph her hometown Randolph and I sat at the edge of my queue happy to hear more or transfix and listening to her share her work in a medium that I had not known was hers but it is please welcome a Vermont woman who lifts us all up hope it's mad to make you thank you thank you so much first I have to express my admiration for this beautiful church and our gratitude for the people who worked hard to keep it this way it's just an amazing legacy I wonder if they had pillows then but fortunately they give them out today you have to pay attention you really can't fall asleep during the sermon because your backside will prompt you to stay awake but you know when you introduced me as a poet that's still new to me and I'm delighted to be in the company of Greg Delanti who has a whole book of poems and has earned that title over the years and I'm happy to be included in this series you might be surprised that a politician can become a poet I still am and I've written poems often on sporadically various sporadically but in the last two years I would say I've focused more on my inner life than my outward life and you sort of need time and reflection to make that transformation and so these are some of the results of thinking about how my life has changed not only that I don't shake every hand in this church campaigning but that aging is a new phase of life and so most of these poems are reflections on how I mute that process so the first poem is called no longer no longer will we make love before breakfast no longer will I dream of seeing new zealand or the cape of good hope or bears in the world no longer will I say yes more than no no longer will danger sparkle and safety book dull no longer will I look at my body without comparison between who I was and who I have become blaming the light for the difference no longer can I toss my hair over my face and count 100 strokes no longer can I do without night cream and day cream slathering on ounce after ounce no longer can I be comfortable sitting in my chair waiting for hours without getting up to stretch my arms and legs no longer can I walk without looking down at my feet to avoid mean cracks and malicious bumps no longer can I skip down stairs like a girl flying without feeling a thing no longer can I approach the precipice without swaying against my will no longer do I think ahead of where I will be in ten years or 20 or more now I think in ones or twos or threes long enough to still hunger for the food of life no longer do I wish for the next day or the next year to come quickly like I did the year I turned 10 I want the days to saunter like the leisurely museum stroller who stops now and then to gaze and get closer to the canvas to see the burst strokes and then steps back for the long view before moving on this is the result of a magnet called teeth I spit them out like out of pits tainted yellow and hard I've rooted from the cave of my cheek where my tongue figures empty rooms leaving black squares where none should be I contort my smile to hide to hide the hag I have become my tongue takes measurements in and out back and forth asleep dread sigh my lids seek like oh I am saved from death by ivory I open wide one tooth hangs on the edge of a cliff and others set in the top of space where it may wobble and lose balance I panic at the thought I must spare my teeth in self-defense I must chop my way into old age I must open wide and smile I must grit I lift my electric toothbrush off its solid base and brush and brush and brush this is called words words my darlings don't leave me I reach for you in the void white with emptiness fingers bent I clutch a vapor and feel nothing I turn to the alphabet A B C D E F G like the child I was playing hide and seek Boston the labyrinth of sense and sound come out come out wherever you are ring around the rosy we all fall down stop the bell rings time to go home the game is up wait my ghost word jumps out from behind the tree incised in the black trunk raw to the vain touch of my trembling hand this is called I am multiples it's uh come on you shouldn't say anything just let it go I am multiples the dancers electric I am multiples the dancers elastic poses stretch my legs high and wide error I fall on his hand as if nothing had happened the opera singer sways by my sucking ribs her high octaves tremble my bones and wrinkle my throat as I spill gallons of sand all over myself I'm on the tennis court with someone else's arm Venus or Serena my body obeys every quick command from head to foot look just inside the line by half an inch the camera ascents my sizzling serve that knows no return the cello is seven between bent legs and curved arms leaving fingers free to run up and down in pursuit of flea notes that I gulp down into a thick low sound that feels good inside I've scorned with the poet's words and claimed them for my own or were they mine in the beginning I'm out of them with tongue and teeth and spit them in your face the writer says what I wish to say leading me from room to room in her house which seems eerily familiar she lived there once can I call the moving van and place my bed here in the chairs over there canvas stone wood chisel brush paint barefaced fully awake ready for action move they say like we did and make a mark I do asking money money and 90 euro Picasso to leave me a space I am multiples I am none it is late it is done my husband just sneezed I'd like to thank him for encouraging me to write and some of these poems are quite personal you did the dishes I cooked you did the dishes did I love you for that as I listen to high note clattering in the kitchen while I sat in my chair reading the newspaper we shared most tasks then but you did the driving and I could sit quietly by your side with only a rare glance in the rear view mirror to check if it was safe to pass now I do everything cook and wash the pots and fill and empty the dishwasher which always is hungry I make the bed which you made when we slept together now I straighten my back to keep my posture not letting it sink into the stoop as I push your wheelchair up the incline only I can get you there and bring you back pushing from the back I am in the lead aiming to pull you out of yourself and into the world I inhabit you visit me from time to time and we talk about the New York Times and the evening news hour hour and we agree the world is spinning crazily out its orbit we attach ourselves again into the morning did I love you because you did the dishes or because I love you there are a few more lines when I cook and clad I love you when I cook and clad in our kitchen with white counters that always mean wiping again and again this is called when I was sick when I was sick with stinging cramps I could not carry my eyelids open I more so felt sticky in my mouth my intestines went round and round churning and speaking their agitated language push and pull back and forth telling me how hard they had to work so that I could exist I promise myself then that when I return to the land of the well I would secrete gratitude from every pore to God she whoever whatever I would take a deep breath deeper than everyday breath and exhale the bellows of air that could blow your house down I would thank God or someone very much like her to being alive today this is caregiver moves it's more rude than muscle that is hard to lift from walker to wheelchair a chasm he must reach he cannot fall not now not again then we fell side by side he backward landed on his rear eye forward just missed the wheels and arms of the deadly walker my neck hurt my shoulder bruised angry with him for standing up without holding on this time I could not reach across to grab his hand this time I could not reach across to grab his hands stricken by wicked gravity falling out of control and helpless air pushing him down into folded collapse I am more upset than he is or so it seems speechless I want to cry out of frustration out of pity for him pity for me this was written in June of this year the lyox were patient or here packaged into themselves in small ziploc bags and allowed them privacy in preparation for spring they waited until right wrist attacked and felt them open releasing their lungs and dangling their colors and intoxicated air how did they know when it was time to spill the scent and make me breathe deeply into my chest and let it linger there how did they know when to shrivel dry into brown kernels that keep their secrets enshrouded emitting nothing this is an earlier poem it's called ants I spared the spider her death in the bath tub this morning she was doing no mom let her live I get kinder as I get older more forgetting I step into the kitchen black ants crawling on the counter ants upside down on the wall my hand sweeps them to the floor quickly not thinking I stomp on them one by one by one the woman sitting next to me has purple vain hands thick as ropes I look at my hands only a shade lighter inky veins bulging out of my paper skin how could I be almost like her these are a couple of poems when I went canvassing for illy in youngstown aloha in a very poor section canvassing youngstown before the election I can't vote I'm wearing a bracelet I had to think a moment before I got it the young black man with spiky joe there was polite he explained I got up there yesterday and could only walk from here to the store he went further I was in for assaulting a cop but he assaulted me but they don't believe me argued in school I graduated from high school last June what what what came over me I wanted to save him here on his street standing in his driveway stay clean and go to college I told him carried away by my sudden urge to set him free and become his savior this is the same young man called diapers I ignored his missing upper teeth when I first spoke to him he wanted to talk I wanted him to vote and he assured me that he was registered in wood we walked across the street and knocked on the door of another house on our list he appeared again that's my house oh you live here yes I'm checking on my little girl it's not easy to be a single father we nodded and then he asked do you know anywhere where I could get free diapers have you tried welfare they don't give them out I thought of a sleeping baby did he say she was three I ignored that she may have been too old for diapers I saw a baby alone in her crib in dirty diapers wait a minute I said I went to our waiting car opened my wallet and took out two fives and a 10 I went back and gave him the money he's probably going to use it to buy drugs my friend said I don't care I said I believe him words I read that are you old are you old am I young no really no I don't want to slide into that other space for the slit down the middle that leaves me alone in my superiority getting out of bed it's hard to pull myself out of my bed by eight like I used to do or even seven seven sometimes six fatigue is the weight that presses my body down with a boulder fist I weigh 300 pounds or more my head turns but does not lift from its pillow on this from its hollow on the squish pillow only five minutes more I flee to the school and she succumbs nine o'clock my god how could that be I'm sleeping my wife my life away an hour lost forever to the pool of death actually some of these will be in about next September or I have more to begin to search for some homes summer summer is so short winter is so long I don't want to stop swimming the lake pulls me with its lake smell I see no boundaries unlike the pool where I count laps and the birds satisfy here I swim in large water and feel small I see the lake in winter it's dull hard surface hard enough to drive a truck across and freeze the fish in place cold waves bidding on rocks turning into long toothed icicles can this be each sun's last day a miracle unlike the biting mouth of winter I'll make the effort I'll swim a little longer for my short breath and cold skin tell me it is time this is about fall a certain about two years ago the earth is a burial ground but brown paper leaves carelessly left to themselves not a sound underfoot no sign that I was here I see a black footprint scooped of leaves a deer who knows something I don't know like where it's going brooding oaks and storm scarred maples asked for my sympathy they have lost so many I dare not stop I must move on traveling on their death this is a poem a few years ago they were my sheets and his bed these are not the right sheets he said that in the corner went down over the edge just tucked them in I said with the hint of annoyance that he didn't know better they always fit on my bed I said exactly what I thought knowing that I might not be understood a worse offend there was a slight grating echo to our words which we heard in different ways in other times with other people it would have shredded the tide that bound us but in this time with the two of us the tear was so quickly rewoven that we looked at each other and laughed why marry the decision was was not made as one would make a box fitting the edges carefully together getting the side straight we came upon it separately and together or perhaps I should say it appeared or better yet evolved like a growing thing that had its own destiny no bend in the no declarations or promises I can't even remember if there was a kiss there must have been but there have been so many sins that they hard to assign to a time and place the decision was too easy some might say too hasty for an old couple like us but then we didn't have the time to weigh what we would do or the inclination we felt we felt light feathered translucent ready to soar into our own unknown this is a love poem each night I wheel you to your door with a kiss on your lips I smile I love you generously I think you don't know how much I love you you say yes I do I do I do we formed a ritual of waiting to buy as I retreat down the hall slowly at first I wave with one hand in the air and then my arms go wild before I turn the corner as they're struck by a storm or signaling for help we wave at tandem you are there and I am here the nurses now know we wave not for them but for one another to have and to hold the love we swore to just two more can't this was written in 2014 can they be more to say after we have said everything there is to say about oatmeal warm toast and sliced bananas the weather has words I find in the report that I wear gloves but no boots not yet he is inside and I am out where the air is colder than it was before chances of snow mixed with rain one never knows which way it will come down we have no plans that have to be changed we talk about dinner what time what place dining room or cafe small morsels of words fill that up until we pause take a breath and devour another sentence this is we live at lake robin and shelter and this was new year's eve at lake robin the wheelchair danced in circles to the rapid beat of the onion river jazz band she was young again unbound with joy free no longer pushing him but flying with him on the dance floor he weighed aside his ribbon oxygen to streaming behind him I grasped John with both hands and brought him to his feet placing the walker within reach he moved his head and then his arms and then his feet to the music we danced we sang with the walker between us and love in silence quite a distance actually um and that was really wonderful and I hope that anyone who can can come back to the Kent who are um an opportunity to meet them and to talk about their work um there are books there for sale or signing and there's beverages and snacks um thank you