 with Danny Dover, Dorothy Robson, and Erin Marcus. Home City is a presentation of the Kellogg Hubbard Library, and I want to thank the wonderful sponsors that help make it happen, and that would be the National Life Group Foundation, Vermont Humanities Council, Hungar Mount Wacoop, Goddard College, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. And today's program is with a poet Danny Dover, and he'll perform his poetry with musical accompaniment by accomplished pianist Dorothy Robson and Erin Marcus. Danny Dover's first full-length book of poetry, Tasting Precious Metal, was a first full-length book of poetry recently published by Antrim House Books. And his poems have appeared in several journals, including Blue Line, Blood Root, and Oberon. And Danny has submitted poems to Poem City many times over the years. Dorothy Robson is a composer, arranger, pianist, music educator, and co-founder of the well-regarded White River Valley Players. As a multi-instrumentalist, Erin Marcus is a well-known to traditional dancers for his performances with various groups throughout Central Vermont. His recent CD with Frost and Fire, Midwinter Spring, has received critical acclaim. Please help me welcome Danny, Dorothy, and Erin. Thank you, Rachel. And thank you so much for including us in this great month of poetry in my peolier. I have to say just at the start that when Dorothy was the first one to suggest the idea of writing music to some of my poems, and I have to admit I was a bit nervous at first. I never had anything like that done before. But I was pleasantly surprised. The results were really quite wonderful. And then more recently, Erin has also joined in. The idea is that each of them was inspired by specific poems that I've written and felt that they wanted to write short piano pieces to them. So you're going to hear some of those. And I'll also read a few poems as well. I thought I'd start by reading a couple of poems that came up this campaign season. I wrote a poem four years ago called Republican Primary Season. And I never thought I'd be reading that poem again. I wrote it then because I don't believe I had ever lived through a more scary, crazy campaigning season as 2012 in the parade of people who said they were qualified to be president. So lo and behold, here we are. And here I am reading the poem again. And you'll notice that this poem, most of it, has absolutely nothing to do with campaigning or politics at all. But it all makes sense when you get to the end. Primary season. Not long ago, in dead of winter, a lost flamingo turned north and tumbled from the sky over Siberia, a shivering pink body on spindly legs, found by startled villagers, an exotic spectacle. They bundled in furs nursed with nettles and warm yak milk through sub-zero nights by a spruce-fired stove and restored to health for the hard journey home. Our own flamingo beams from a bare-limbed maple in bright plastic exile where it snagged in floodwaters early last fall, a welcome break from the dull winter palette of unease and isolation that has settled upon us once again. When darkness portends whatever shifting course is feared the most as if an entire nation, tired and lost, just dropped from the sky without compass or map, a colorful alien creature waiting to be thawed out with a little kindness and sense of direction. And then it made me think the city that gave us a candidate for president who wants to build walls and keep people out of this country, also the same city gives us the borough of Queens, New York. And for those of you who have never been to Queens, this is one of the most culturally diverse places anywhere in the world where people are living in peace. And to get to Queens you have to take a subway called the number seven. And so I guess in tribute to Queens and to all of the people new arrivals in our country, I've written this tribute on the immigrant train, New York City. The Queens bound subway, known as number seven, boards deep in a dusty cave below Manhattan's glossy mountains, gathering speed on screeching rails, submerged beneath a tidal river, bursting out into brilliant sunlight like a well kept secret boldly revealed as you ride and ride, hardly noticed for your pale dull skin amid a pressing mass of faces gleaming every shade of black or brown like polished driftwood saved from shores of 100 nations, a pack of pilgrims swaying over a shifting ground. This is their ship of gambled dreams, a lurching vessel laden with all we have been or shall become, twisting on an ancient track across the swirl and sprawl of flim flam streets and asphalt rooftops, they now call home. So this next portion, we're going to do a set with, I'm going to do a set with Dorothy, who, we have these three poems. I'm just going to briefly introduce those three poems to you right now. The first one, Snake Skin. I became a mentor for a boy starting four years ago, a boy in our town, who comes from a rather challenging family situation. And I'm happy to say that we're still together. But when we first met, there was a lot of trusting, testing going on, and this 10-year-old boy. And so I wrote this poem for him called Snake Skin. The next poem that we're going to be doing, Snoyno. Snoyno happens to be the word onions spelled backwards. And just being the kind of poet that I am, I happen to be glancing at a bag of onions one day and happen to see it in just the right way that I saw this word snoyno and figured I had to write, there was a poem there somewhere. And the third one that Dorothy's going to play is called Wavos Revueltos. And that's a little more difficult to describe. I say it's Wavos Revueltos from Camelshump to Peekskill, New York. And those are the Peekskill, New York is close to where I grew up. And Camelshump is a place that I love to hike. And I love both geology and I love also changes in our culture. And I saw this connection between how change takes place in geology in such slow and imperceptible yet inevitable ways. And we can only hope that the same thing happens in our culture as well. So, Dorothy, snake skin. A snake skin is only a snake skin until given to the 10-year-old who has barely begun to trust in you. Shed some doubts like translucent scales from his troubled heart with his searching look back to something forgotten but true in nature's fragile design, held weightless and shimmering in his restless young eyes. Someday, you pray, with grace and ease, you both may shed these clumsy skins in tall lush grass and slip away. I'm going to say a little something before the next one. The next one is the poem, Snoino, which I had a hard time learning how to say. And it is not uncommon for composers who are writing something maybe about a person's name that they want to include. And they will make a theme based on the letters of that person's name. Well, I've arbitrarily assigned A, B, C, D, E, F for the purposes of coming up with a snoino theme. And we also have an onion theme. So when you hear it, this is the onion theme. This is the snoino theme. Snoino, I'm studying the label on a bag of onions. Snoino spelled backwards, which reminds me of my old rambler that only ran in reverse. And soon I'm imagining a parallel universe where chopping snoino makes me laugh instead of cry, and where all moments when I meant yes instead of no lie waiting in a pile, like leftover parts from a broken transmission, which is to say there are a few things I would gladly reverse if given the chance, such as poisoned words once thrown in your face, spelled backwards now, harmless syllables, frozen in the frigid air between us to sprinkle down like laughter onto the dance floor of our marriage. Course bands of hard granite, once flat as sea bottom, now fold and arch like elephant skin on a bare rock mountain named for the back of a foreign beast, draped and curled in graceful curves, proof enough of nature's enduring patience in softening even the hardest places, even the hardest places, even this gritty town near my birth where old world neighbors greet dark-skinned newcomers with grinding suspicion, where the subtle shift and bending of bedrock might easily be missed one Sunday morning in a local diner as a friendly waitress seats shy Salvadorans trying their first meal out in America. How do you say scrambled in Spanish? I'm learning, she smiles, huevos revueltos, huevos revueltos. So these next two poems with Aaron's music, the first one, a bat is living in my canoe, a somewhat true story. It doesn't need too much explanation. The second poem, the full title, is to the black boy who painted his arms white. And the backstory to that is fairly simple. Just a teenager that I know told me recently that he remembered as a little boy, probably six or seven years old. He had one classmate, the only African-American who came to school one morning having painted his arms white. So I wrote the poem for that boy. Aaron, a bat is living. The faint, soft, rustle flutters like dragonflies in a dark, cramped cavity of the bow. A bat is living in my canoe. Probably nested there under the shed roof since March. Then three rough hours on a car rack to this first paddle of spring. Leave the two of us out here on still water, rousing from winter, drumming wingbeats again. Drumming wingbeats against a mist and cedar rim shore flaming in sunrise. To the black boy who painted his arms white. To the black boy who painted his arms white in the all-white school of our all-white village. Pondering today how it felt to be you, the only stroke of black on an all-white canvas, vanishing limb by limb. Wondering if you still whitewash your dreams or your shirt sleeves long. Once when things fell apart, I tried painting my heart black. And I had no more use for arms. You could have mine now. They're good for holding on. I, too, have wished to be unmade, prayed to pass for something I'm not. After that, a little bit of comic relief. My father was a dentist. And back in that era, it meant that I lived in a house with a dental office adjoining. And so I wrote this poem called Above the Dental Office. From school each day, I'd return to a room above the office of my dentist father over the piercing wine of molars filled and whimpering pleas of children trapped like cornered animals. And my father's voice, so caring and calm and soothing as mint, all drifting up through ceiling cracks with strains of muzak in a muted soundtrack for coming of age during warm afternoons of salacious groping with a chain-smoking girlfriend, who soon would leave me alone in despair scorned for spitting each time I French kissed her full, luscious mouth, disgust and desire and the shriek of the drill all throbbing together in the air of a room where I first learned it's possible to live with pain or at least lie down just a few feet above it. And this poem is called Quick Stop. Not sure there's much that needs to be said about this. I think just about everybody could imagine a scene something like this if they've done any traveling in this country. Quick Stop, staggering through the sliding doors at the throughway Quick Stop with a throng of hungry travelers, desperate for the perfect fuel, seekers stocking crowded aisles stuffed with stacks of energy bars and junk food drinks, cheesy chips and candied nuts, slim gyms, KitKats, dazzling displays of doodle this and snicker that. And for a moment, I could be in church surrounded by congregants mumbling labels of fat and sugar content droning from every corner like chants or prayers or confessions of guilt and desire as if we might all be in this together, running on empty, eager to strike a deal with any flashy packaged promising deliverance. And though not a believer, I am one more weary soul searching for nothing less than a source of happiness and end to suffering hopeful that if only I look long and hard enough, the answer could be here and now or maybe at the following exit. So for this next set with Dorothy, the first poem by the numbers, I don't think there's much to say about that. This was just a poetic moment. Honestly now was written at a campsite in the Adirondacks on one of those ideal Adirondacks summer camping moments. And this is one of my favorites. I love this piece that Dorothy wrote. So Dorothy, by the numbers, there's comfort. I confess in living life by the numbers, by the ebb and flow of calories and seasons, cataloging memories like baseball cards, calibrating time in obituaries, measuring health in heartbeats, security in dollars. But by day's end, things never quite add up. And then at night, bewildered by the infinity of stars, I dream once again of wandering a world without any numbers, beyond formulas, without scores to settle. Honestly now, campsite as cathedral, quirky, rooted columns, 1,000 vestibules to choose for coffee and blessings, morning light shafts sliced through air so thick it fuses with lake and land. My breath takes in all as one rich, foamy, loamy ether. Osprey's whistle to know all this fully means to die. What a relief to wash a bowl, change socks, filter water. Honestly now, where do we go from here? These next three poems. I wrote Labor Day, Last Labor Day, 2015. And it was inspired by the tragedy of at that time the migration of Syrians at its peak. Flood was written right after Tropical Storm Irene. And I actually wrote a couple of poems about Tropical Storm Irene. But this one was just a short time after the storm. And so I captured kind of a raw time, that feeling immediately after. And Virgin Mary is a poem I wrote for my wife, whose name happens to be Mary. One more thing about Labor Day, the other thing that this poem was inspired by, was I heard Grace Paley interviewed. And she was talking about how her father, who was in his 90s, was still giving his daughter instructions on how to live her life. And she was in her 70s. And what he said to her was, every morning, when you get up in the morning, you must take your heart in your hands and say, thank you, good job. You're doing a good job. And he kept insisting, he's saying, and I don't mean metaphorically. I mean, I want you to grab your heart, hold onto your heart and tell it what a good job it did. Labor Day, by morning, a great blue heron has settled like a bedspread over a trout-filled pool. By evening, coyotes are keening at a lone ultralight, droning softly under a full harvest moon. By midnight, bursts of small arms fire pulse from the backyard party of a distant neighbor. And by day's end, a lifeless boy from a shattered country completes his journey drifting onto a foreign shore. So by tomorrow, you might speak to your well-rested heart, nested gently in your hands, of a job well done and the long, hard work still remaining. If only I could drive an excavator. I need heavy equipment to dredge through the silt and gravel of language. It will take a dozen bulldozers to push enough words through my mouth and return them to a shady rill of sentences that I used to recognize. But so many adjectives have been lost, swept away, and the only noun remaining is water, water, water. My neighbor tries to speak, choking on water. The only verb is water, a chorus of water, wild screams of water. Speech lies soaking wet, useless, and unsalvageable. The only dry ground is silence, where we stand. While giving the dozers time to screech out a few words buried under tons of stone, until then, we'll need an earlier language. Let our fingers intertwine, and tired eyes meet and linger. Water might just return to its proper place if we wait long enough, until we can soothe each other again in a stunning waterfall of fresh-reigned tears. Virgin Mary, her favorite figurine, now a sad pile of broken blue and white porcelain, heaped on the counter, and my wife implores a resurrection. Be performed by me, a simple Jew armed only with superglue and trepidation. But setting mind and jaw squarely to the task of all mankind, I do manage restoring her slightly cracked sly smile to its proper place. The same smile that smashed me open more than 30 years ago, still thrilling in random glances over a sandwich or pillow. And though we've been broken a few times, as may happen to most things brittle when hit by something hard, the scattered China always beckons us to the bare floor on bent knees, searching eye to eye under chair and table for the missing piece with jagged hands sparkling blue and white and soft in prayer. This next section I'm calling the Death, Dying, and Serious Bodily Injury section. Last July, Lisa and Dale O'Keith were on their way back from a trip from their home in northern Wisconsin to the coast of Maine, and were returning when they drove on the road right past our house. And a few minutes later, about a mile above us on a sharp curve, an out-of-control car sideswiped their motorcycle, taking off Dale's foot and severing Lisa's leg, literally left it on the pavement. Mary sent them a card. We got a phone call. And soon we were visiting them in the hospital regularly. And so out of this senseless and brutal accident, a new friendship developed. And so I wrote this poem, The Accident, as kind of a tribute to how these strange gifts can come to us. And Moonlight was written while camping by myself in the Adirondacks on a beautiful lake while thinking about a dear friend of ours who soon passed away. That was a couple of years ago. So that's Moonlight. So, Dorothy? The Accident. Sorry. We are total strangers. Yet here it is, a hospital room with not enough chairs and a missing leg, yours torn like paper from your body. You glimpsed Mary's blooming gardens as you cruised by moments before time stopped. It's sufficient reason to be here now. Flowers gripped by hands, ill at ease in this room of phantom limbs. I would much rather hold my breath if it could help to restore you. Is this what it takes? A thousand miles from home, you and your husband, like two birds, gently saved from the side of our road. Spare the pity. In this world teeming with damaged souls, we are all one tribe circling the fire of a new friendship with laughter and stories around your bed. The healing bones know exactly what to do. Moonlight for Lynne Hall. Because a thing is named, moonlight dying. I could believe the thing is known. But one small pond on one warm night has spawned a language all its own for water, loon, stillness, shimmering. And my body softened loose as sand, sifted gently on a granite ledge. A wash in satin pools of light amid the wild ones, shouting praises to a stenographer moon who madly scribes their brilliant prose into lines of stars upon a page of tonight's unfinished story, her story dying, in fading constellations inked behind and approaching dawn. So I'm going to finish up with a couple of poems. And I thought I'd read a poem that's written very recently. We just got back from a couple of weeks in Ireland. And I thought with spring on its way that the image in this would be very appropriate for what we might hope to see on the hills of Vermont soon. It's called Gathering Sheep. I've come to rest in a well-grazed pasture, tucked deep and high in a rugged draw, carries grim fogged mountains, leering down with grizzled chins of broken boulders upon the long green valley of Bredia, neat trimmed and silent with a hint of rain, nothing a stir. And then I spot them a mile below two black collies in tandem motion, sprinting back and forth in graceful arcs. The sheep has won, darting about as a school of fish, then stretching out like rising bread or a flowing string of scattered pearls, a single moving fluid thing alive and shifting like northern lights or the mind of a child and the dogs, relentless choreographers gliding noiselessly, exclamation points on a landscape at a loss for words as the earth and all its fragile creatures take time to play and dance together. And before I read this last short poem, again, I want to thank everybody for coming, and especially to the work of Poem City and the Kellogg Harbor Library. Just fantastic, Rachel. Thank you. And to Dorothy and Erin, I'm so appreciative of the time we've spent together doing this. And we're going to be performing again in Randolph on April 29th. So please tell your friends. And be sure to help yourself for a book on the way out. $19, they are practically free considering how much they cost to produce. So anyway, this poem was written for a much more severe winter than we just had. But I think you'll get the gist of it. It's called Chickadees. In this deep, cold cave of January, the house beams settle with a cracking thud like an empty pint slammed down on a pub counter. I could use a refill about now. Daylight is running low, and the snow tires have a better grip on things than my slipping sanity. Thank God for the Chickadees. Those little truck stop waitresses, shrugging off winter's dismal tips, while going about their business with eternal cheerfulness. A little more coffee or tea, tea, tea? Thank you. Thank you.