 Old West Church, here standing strong since 1823. Welcome to our fall Sunday afternoon reading series, first established in 2013, and now it's fifth year, and for the past three years known as Words Out Loud. I want to thank the Old West Church team, all the board members, and any caretakers who have given or continue to give in time, labor, or dollars to the growing and vibrant life of this gem of a building. I thank all the curators, volunteers, and docents working with the Kent Museum for their unwavering support of Words Out Loud and for each year hosting a reception after the readings within the Art at the Kent exhibit, which this year is back story. So after the reading today, you can go down the road to the Kent and enjoy the exhibit. Meet the authors and see the art and have a beverage or a snack. Today is the first of our three Sundays in September at 3 o'clock readings. Next Sunday will be on the 23rd, George Longenecker and Karla Van Liep. And the following Sunday will be September 30th with Rick Agrin, who's right here, and Eleanor Georgieu, and George Longenecker's here somewhere else. So George will be reading next Sunday, and Rick will be on the next one. Today we're really excited to have Bermorse and Angela Patton reading. In their writing, both of these authors convey a sense of humor and humility, share an attitude born of grit and gratitude, see themselves at home in spaces defined by a sense of self, by blood relatives, by relatives gained through marriage, and by family that grows out of the larger community. Bermorse, from down the road, at Horse Fire. Some might call his writing stories. Some might call them essays. And sometimes they're called commentaries. They may appear in the Times Argus. But I've been thinking about another word a lot lately. I've always loved the word heirloom. We think of family heirlooms, of heirloom apples, or perennials, of heirloom seeds set aside and saved for later, for an emergency, for survival or sustenance. In Miriam Webster's dictionary, one of the definitions given heirloom is something of special value handed on from one generation to another. Bermorse earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Plant and Soil Science from UVM. But that's only one part of the very full life of harvesting stories. Please welcome Bermorse, who will give us a taste of his heirloom stories. Thank you, Mary, and thank you, everyone, for having me up here this afternoon. I'm so honored to be here to do what I can. Can you hear me? My voice doesn't always carry that well. We need it, too, today. And I will be reading. I hope I have time, a couple of stories from one of my books, Golden Times Tales through the Sugarhouse Window. And in case any of you came here expecting to hear any poetry out of me, Jeff Hewitt, close your ears. You will get none out of this one. Mary emailed me yesterday. And just to give me some information about today's scheduling and activities, probably remind me in case I forgot, which might happen with me, about she said it in that email. I'm so glad, Burr, I don't need to give you directions to the Old West Church. And indeed, Mary, you did not need to give me directions. I spent my first five years in Calus. It was just about a mile west of here, up on Robinson Hill. And the view from that place would include the mountains and the hills of Groton over toward the state forest. And then they say, on clear days, clear to New Hampshire beyond. But the centerpiece of the view, what we saw first, and foremost, was this very church. And it was a wonderful site to wake up to on a clear morning. The church is grounded on Calus Bedrock, of which there's plenty of. And it has a steeple that points toward heaven, which is important, too. The church is extra meaningful to me because it was a great, great, great grandfather of mine, Mr. Lovell Kelton, who framed this church. To my understanding, what you see is ornamentation. What holds the ornamentation up is an intricate, probably hand-humed framework. And you can see bits and pieces in that steeple that's going to go into place next week, I think. But grandfather Kelton framed this church. He came up from Norwich, Massachusetts. And I don't know what drove him to come to an area like this, but I'm glad he did. He also, after he finished this job in 1823, he went down the road and framed this church's twin, the old meeting house in East Montpournier Center. And that's where my family moved when I was five years old down to East Montpournier. But although I spent 65 of my 70 years in that place, I never have considered it home. Callus is my home. It's where my heart resides and I just have such a good feeling every time I come here. The neighborhood here also is full of morses. The woods up here in Callus is full of morses. They're dying out, but some of them. It's also full of other ancestors of mine just up the road, another mile north. It's the Robinson Summit. And it was a great, great, great, great, I don't stutter. Grandfather of mine, Mr. Joel Robinson, that came from Southern Massachusetts area, way bad, looking for a better source of water to run a summit. And I find it's a little ironic that here we are in 2018. We're still looking for better sources of energy. So full circle again. Out and back are buried three of my other great, greats. And I visit them often. Today I would like to read, speaking of the area, and if there's time I'd like to read two stories. One is about people from this area. And the other one is about people from halfway across the other side of the world. This first story is called Flat Chucks Forever. We have two types of people. That's not good, that's never good. So I'm sorry. The secret is out now. We have two types of people in Vermont these days, the flatlanders and the woodchucks. Anyone who has moved in within the last 30 years is a flatlander, regardless of point of origin, Colorado, the Poconos, Switzerland, they're all flatlanders. Flatlanders are generally distinguishable by three qualities. They're left leaning, have a questioning nature, and show a propensity toward outdoor sports like running. Woodchucks are long term Vermonters. Most of them are right leaning, have a welcoming nature, and spend much of their off time splitting wood. Flatlanders and woodchucks get along with each other just fine, because to use an old Vermont term, they know percentage in the fighting. There are fewer woodchucks than ever these days, but those left are still sweet. Sweet as the maple syrup that will forever course their veins. There used to be two distinct woodchuck dialects, but because of the mobility of late, the peaks and valleys of Vermont dialect have, dare I say, flattened out. Two of my three most memorable sugarhouse visitors this season were woodchucks. The third was a flatlander. Woodchuck talk comes in two speeds, fast and slow, which reminds me of the symbols on my tractors that sell the rabbit and the turban. The other day a rabbit visited, he was a stout young man with dark curly hair that squeezed out of a stained John Deere cat. He came on like a bulldozer in the sugar bush, his eyes aiming immediately at my woodchick burner. You boy with old woodchicks, I used to run one of them rigged down the sap, born like a sum bitch. Yes sir, been sugaring all my life through up and eating, but now live down in Dunmiston in southern Vermont, you know the banana belt. Still born in the sap, but only on a small rig about 200 buckets. Huh, sap ain't runnin' much this year. Say, here they're messin' up, messin' with the cert grade a lot down into the legislature in Montpey. They don't know nothin' up there on the hill anyway. Well, better get back to the banana belt down by Dunmiston, ha ha, nice meetin', nice meetin' you, keep boilin' with them woodchips, they're born like a sum bitch. With that he about phased and headed out the sugar house. He headed out the sugar house door, he returned three times with second thoughts. However, before his tired-looking wife finally focused it into the car and down the road toward the banana belt. The day the turtle visited, I was feelin' a little bored and anxious for some company. All of a sudden, all of a sudden company arrived in the form of a wrinkled up old man who I recognized as someone my father used to know from the hills of Elmore. He hobbled in and let by a handmade cane. Before he spoke he took a huge breath of sugar house air. No, Harry, he said. Oh, I replied, I'm Harry Jr., they call me Burr. Did you go to school with my father? No. Oh well, I remember you, Mr. Simpson. Haven't seen you for ages. I believe you come from up Elmore way. Yeah. You used to milk, was Jersey cows up there, didn't you? Yeah. Did you know that Harry passed away back in 1999, I said. You don't say. You don't say he said as he slowly turned to leave. His greatest eloquence, however, came with a single tear that ran down his face like a drop of sand. My third visitor, the Flatlander, is a great friend who used to make maple syrup at the foot of Hunger Mountain. He was a good sugar maker and the one who got me started with wood chips some 14 years ago. Taught me a lot he did. He came in the sugar house full of compliments about some of my accomplishments as a businessman and a book author. I stopped him short, however, and reminded him that I'm just a woodchuck. Well, Lou said, I'd rather think you're more of a woodchow. I thought about what he said, and although it immediately struck me as funny, the aftertaste planted a seed of concern. You see, there are no class distinctions here in Vermont. We all work together and help each other out. Sure, there are different ways of talking and leaning, but just like the different grades of maple syrup, that's what makes life interesting. The short of it is quite simple. We're all Vermonters, enough said. And now I threw my clock on the floor. But I'm gonna assume I have time enough for one more, so I'll take that license. And this is about our Russian boy. So I told you we're going halfway across the world. That's another thing that makes life interesting, that we can do that. Our Russian boy. Besides the usual maple sugaring paraphernalia, our sugar house contains a mismatch of old farming artifacts, piles of retired sap buckets and sculptures, sculptures fashioned from interesting shaped trees. It's intriguing to see the different tastes of people who go there. Some bend only on learning about the maple process, gravitate to the evaporator and completely ignore everything else. The right brain folks stop at the sculptures and the antique-minded Google over the artifacts. One thing that gets universal review, however, is a special stone that sits just outside the sugar house. It's an odd pyramid-shaped stone that I picked out from a head throw of boulders on our farm. It serves to memorialize our Russian son, Alex, who loved the sugar house. Alex came to us in the fall of 1994. We hadn't expected to host an international exchange student, but a friend of mine worked for world learning and was putting pressure on. We scanned a list of students from all over the world, thinking of the inadequacies of our small house and our busy schedules. Something, however, about a blonde, round-faced boy from Karov, Russia, spoke to Betsy, the family Naysayer. His name was Alexei Yuganovich Novosolov, and she was drawn to his eyes, deep Russian eyes, that we would go to know so well. We had no trouble picking him out from the group disembarking from the plane at Burlington International Airport. He was lankier than we had thought, stood ahead taller than our two boys who went to him and vastly shook his hand. Betsy hugged him and asked if she might call him Luxie. She looked bewildered, even hurt, as his strange boy shoved aside our attempts to help, picked up his entire luggage and said, call me Alex. He went silent on the ride home, showing little interest in the Vermont countryside. When we pulled into our yard, he went purposely to his luggage, once again brushing aside our attempts to help. It was not until, it was not until supper time that the ice broke. We were seated around the table, the three boys on one side. Betsy had made soup, which Alex attacked with a Russian vengeance. He cleaned his plate of the meat and potatoes, but refused her offer of dessert with his longest dialogue yet, I am full of it. He asked. Our boys, Rob and Tom, first looked at each other and then erupted into gales of laughter. At his, at this statement, packed with both Russian innocence and American double meaning. He appeared confused for only a second before a huge smile grew on his face and he joyfully pushed the two other boys domino style off their chairs. The bonding was complete. Alex fit into our family like a Russian winter, intense with a strong sense of belonging. He played hard and worked hard. He excelled at U-32 high school, as good with the classics as he was technology. Technology was his passion, however. We still have Alex repair jobs and devices in our house and on our farm. His talents I might add were not always practical or legal. This is still somewhere in our neighborhood, still possibly cranking out vodka with Alex's name. Our relationships took varied dimensions. With me, he was light and jovial. He called me Mr. Burr and joked about my lack of hair and short stature. Mr. Burr is not fat. He just has low center of gravity. He played music and pranks with our boys and learned American teenage things. Above all, he was a loving brother. His serious side only came out with Betsy. Betsy helped him with schedules and studies. She wanted him to take the positive part of America back to Russia when he left us in June. Sometimes late at night, Alex expressed his darker side to Betsy. He accepted the destiny of a short life and nothing Betsy said would have swashed that feeling he seemed to know. We sent him home to Keroff in June when school ended, a boy with two faces, his Russian face returned to a country in turmoil and a home and heritage that he loved. His American face held a devilish grin and said goodbye with a pledge to meet again soon. He picked up the same bags he arrived with, now full with American stuff. And that's the last we saw of Alex. Four months later, we received a call that he had witnessed a drug transaction in Keroff and been killed by the Russian mafia. My story ends also with two faces, a sad face still grieves for Alex, our Russian son, a happier face, however accepts the memories of fun and laughter. The memorial outside our sugar house prompts many questions about Alex. I've grown used to the queries, but am not ruled by sadness. I prefer to think of Alex as not deceased. He's a fixer and a jover. He's led my family to Russia twice now, where his people are ours and his presence is felt by us all. His presence is also in our sugar house by that pyramid shaped stone. It's just a simple stone with a simple message but points to the sky where Alex beams back a bigger message. Treat life like Russian meal. Eat, be happy and walk away full of it. Take into many places in here and many moods and it's good to have them all. That's what makes life life. Angela Patton is an explorer whose passport is poetry. Reading her work, you might find yourself looking at a map, taking in one world she depicts in one poem focusing on a little star or arrow that says you are here to get your grounding. Only to find later in the poem or on the next page you are somewhere else and possibly in a different time zone entirely. Where you are and where she is is always evolving in a good way. To help the reader travel with her, Angela has become an expert at offering up different lenses. A magnifying glass takes you in close to witness, for example, family conversation around an intimate kitchen table. A telescope takes you across the Atlantic and a crystal ball back through time to the places and people of her childhood in Dublin, Ireland. Sometimes she holds up a mirror to see behind her or gives a glimpse into how she sees herself in the present, perhaps in comparison to who she once was. And sometimes her travels can be viewed through a kaleidoscope where past and present are juxtaposed and common themes or subjects are seen differently from a different angle, illuminating her story with an easy turn of the wrist or a turn of craze. Please welcome Angela Patton, who will take us to different places line by line. I can't believe that a collapsed Catholic like myself is standing up here on the podium. What a wonderful place to read. I hope you can all hear me all right. Is that yet? I really enjoyed your stories, Burr. That was such a treat. And partly because I grew up on stories myself. My mother was a great storyteller and that was our entertainment when we were kids. I was listening to her talk about her own life and her family's life. And she had a way of spinning the least thing into a great story. I thought I'd start with a poem from my oldest book that came out in Ireland. And it's about a memory from when I was a kid, when I was a little kid in Dublin. I have to explain a few things here. It's called Patch Pub, 1958. And the Patch Pub still exists in Sally Nobben, the part of Dublin where I grew up. But it no longer looks like a patch cottage. Now it's ugly and big and has, you know, tin roof and everything else, and it's packed to the doors. But back then it really did have a patched roof. And the other important thing to know here is that my parents didn't drink at all. They weren't even surprised that Irish people don't drink, but in fact they belonged to a Catholic temperance organization and they never drank their whole lives. But they weren't uptight about it. They didn't mind having some alcohol in the house when people visited. The other thing really about this poem, and I'm sorry for the long explanation, but it came from a particular word that I got from my brother. And the word is gormless. You say someone's an Egypt, it means foolish, but a gormless Egypt means you're really hopeless, you know. And it's a wonderful word, so I had to put it somewhere. This is called Patch Pub, 1958. It was Grand National Saturday and our father, never a betting man, had put his shilling each way for the four of us on a horse called Oxo. After his dinner we trailed him to the patch to see the race, running a gauntlet of cat-shedded glances as the men looked up from their pints to gawk at the strangers. I think the world was completely brown then. The smoke-filled air, the done-colored caps of the drinkers, the dark oak of the bar and deeper dark of porter chased with a swirl of whiskey. The smell you'd sometimes get in the early morning after it rained when you'd walked over a metal grating and caught the waft of stale ale and wood-binds rising up from the depths. Our father, thin as a wippet among stealth fattened neighbors, beckoned the bar man while we clung to his coattails. He brought us orange-crush poured sideways into tall harp glasses and tato crisps tasting of smoke and beer. The television blared from among the dusty bottles on a corner shelf. All eyes were glued to Oxo when our sister, nervous as a thoroughbred, clamped her teeth down hard and bit a piece from the fluted edge of the glass. Chaos then, everyone yelling, don't swallow, spit it out quick now. There, there, you'll be right as rain in a minute. But what struck me then as now was the suddenness with which everything can change. One miniature holding onto your father, safe as houses, the next you've bitten through some invisible membrane and the world and Garrett Riley is shouting at you while you stand there like a gormless Egypt, your mouth filling up with fizzy liquid and delicate shards of glass. Just to give you an update on the Thatch Pub, a couple of years ago, I came across a Facebook group that was called, you know, people who were born in Sally Noggin. And so there were people from all over the world who posted in it, without any punctuation or capitalization or anything else, but there were a few great gems and here's one that I came across. This is someone who's probably a generation or two younger than me. Well, another new Nogginer here, born in Brandt from Lockford, Phyllis, a relation of mine was tried to get me on here for ages, but finally here I am. I played football for Pierce Rovers and Jones, worked in The Thatch under Pat Daherty and Johnny Nevin, and for those who remember, Donal O'Neill. That was when The Thatch was like the Wild West, but was packed seven nights a week, rang a muffin on a Sunday night and Dave and Nick on a Saturday. The characters that drank there you could write a book about. Andy Hand, Nan Kane, Amanda, May and John Green, Bonzo Rowe was barred, but used to hide in the corner so you couldn't see them. Tiddler, he used to hold his talent show every Friday morning in the bar with the stuff he found in the bins as prizes. Luke Roach, one of the funniest men ever, and Charlie Byrne, they were like a double act. The riot after the summer festival, kickboxing in the car park, the 1990 World Cup, best time ever, painting the mannequins face black to make it a Cameroon supporter when they played England. The darts on a Monday and Wednesday night, first place I ever threw a dart, worked in The Thatch for 13 years and loved every minute, but now I'm a country person living down in Wexford. I miss the old noggin, but not so much the new. I couldn't resist reading that by way of telling you that the old Dublin is a lot different from the new. And a lot of my poems come from my childhood growing up there. It's all changed drastically since then. But I love the connections with birth stories that are so, you know, that live in Vermont whereas mine, my childhood stories anyway, live in Dublin. But a Dublin that's really disappeared for the most part. I had a memoir come out, a prose memoir come out a couple of years ago and I discovered that a lot more people read prose than poetry. But there you are, what can you do? So I thought I'd start with something that happened to me not long after I came over from Ireland and was putting myself through college at UBM. This book is called High Tea at a Low Table, which was something my mother used to say if there was a dark and gloomy day, she'd say, oh, let's have high tea at a low table. In other words, pretend we're posh and well off. So this is chapter one. On a sunny February afternoon in 1984, I drove into the parking lot at the University of Vermont in Burlington, found a parking space and switched off the ignition. Then I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. The Subaru was a real lemon in color and condition. I bought it for $500 when I left by marriage and moved into an apartment on my own. I was clueless about cars and terrified at driving, but I had to be able to pick up my son and deliver him to school. I didn't realize I would need to pour quarts of oil into the engine every day and I cracked the block in my first month of ownership and had to borrow another 500 to get it fixed but the car still had a few disturbing quirks. For an intelligent girl that could be very foolish, my mother would have said, clucking her tongue indisputable. But she was far away in Dublin and blissfully ignorant about my troubles. I put the thought out of my head and reflected instead on the romantic poetry class I'd just attended and the anthropology exam scheduled for next day. I was a full-time English major, putting myself through college with the help of a half-time secretarial job in the Center for Developmental Disabilities. As a 32-year-old single mother in school with 19-year-olds, I felt somewhat developmentally disabled myself. My son moved unhappily back and forth between me and his dad, spending exactly half as weak with each parent. It was a fractured existence, but I plumbed my poetry and literature studies like a drowning sailor to a spar, not sure whether to cry for help or just keep paddling. I was walking toward the rear of the building when I noticed a young man coming towards me. I registered brown hair, slight build, faded plaid shirt. He repeatedly glanced right and left as he approached. Perhaps he's lost on his car trouble, I thought, preparing to offer assistance in my friendly Irish way. Get back in the car, he hissed. I stared at him, hardly able to believe my ears. I looked around quickly, noticing how quiet the usually crowded parking lot was, not a soul in sight. I was about to run in the opposite direction when the man took a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me. It was a small handgun that fit neatly into his palm. The steel barrel caught the sunlight and shone like a jewel. What was I to do? This wasn't a story I'd read in a book. It was the real world cutting in, as if the radio of my parts had found suddenly dead. The weapon created an immediate intimacy between us. There was something obscene in its sudden intrusion. I felt the rest of the world, the parking lot full of snow-dusted cars and the red brick office building gilded in the pale light of the afternoon, all the way under my feet. My head felt light, as if detached from the rest of my body. I began to foamle in my bag for the car key. Don't make me use this, the man said in a shaky voice. Okay, okay, take it easy, I managed to mumble. I could tell by his face that he was serious. Suddenly there was no question about what I should do. We both understood the simple universal language of violence. I got back in the car and the passenger side. He took the keys and started the engine. As we drove down the street I kept seeing people I knew, but they were oblivious to me. We turned the corner onto Colchester Avenue and I thought about jumping out of the traffic lights. Locked that door, the man barked suddenly. I obeyed, sinking back into my seat. That's the first chapter and I suppose it's a bit of a teaser. The first time I read that in a bookshop somebody said, did you survive? But just by way of connection, although this might be a little repetitive, I just recently, for the first time in my life, got a new car and it turns out to be a Subaru. I've never had a new car before, it's lovely, but I thought I had to write something about the old one. So this is called old to a lemon. Yes, it was you, my old Subaru, a lemon in both character and color. Your first car was supposed to be special, like a first boyfriend or a first kiss. But I was so dumb I didn't know you needed to guzzle oil like a drunk. I cracked your engine block within a month and had to borrow $500 to get you fixed. The same sum I had borrowed to ransom you in the first place. You were never quite right after that. The wrong mix of air and fuel in your internal combustion system made your backfire constantly, like a rude child delighting in the sound of his unmentionable bodily functions. Or my uncle's old bulldog, Bruce, bad tempered and ferociously flatulent. I used to turn your key and cringe waiting for the explosion. Old ladies on the sidewalk would jump and turn around as if to see who had been shot. When you were stolen, I crossed my fingers, hoping you'd never come back. But like the cat the neighbors tried to drown in the harbor by putting it in a sack with rocks, there you were when I got home, sitting on the doorstep, giving the lie to both longing and logic, sporting a vulgar new suit of fingerprint, dust, noisy and rude as ever. Let's see. I want to go back and forth a little bit between these two books, partly because the memoir gives a little bit of background to the poems and makes a little bit of a connection with them. After the dreadful kidnapping incident, I go back to Ireland. But I come back to it several times in the course of the book. One thing about my mother was that she was a great talker. And as a consequence, I hardly spoke for the first 20 years of my life because I was so afraid of becoming like her. But now here I am like everybody else I've turned into my mother. Here's a little bit about her from the memoir. My mother and her relations were all great talkers. If they had been runners, they could have competed at the marathon level. My father, on the other hand, came from silent country people and he was always warning us not to be talking to strangers. Country people, my mother explained, were moody and secretive. They're too quiet and they never tell you about their affairs she said of our rural relations. But they're nosy enough to find out everything about you. Mother, or Mammy, was born Annie Elizabeth Mary Swords in 1913. The daughter of a sailor from the north side of Dublin and a seamstress from the county Wicklow. She grew up in Glassville, Dublin, cheek by jowl with countless relations and innumerable neighbors. A stone's throw from the seaside, the shops, the red brick Harold National School that she attended until the age of 13. And Glassville church where she married my father in 1948. Her relations were all sailors and we loved her stories of their adventures on the high seas with the British Navy and her descriptions of the silk fans, lace shawls and other exotic gifts they brought back from foreign parts. Dad, on the other hand, was at Colchee, born in 1918 in Addenstown County, Neve. He grew up in a small point wash house on one acre. His father had been born in the house next door and although his five brothers emigrated to America the move from one house to another was the only one our grandfather made for the rest of his life. These fundamental differences formed the basis of our identity as children. We were Irish, we were Catholic, we were poor and our parents were as different as chalk and cheese. We'll see about them. Back to this for a bit. Here's a poem I wrote for my mother or with my mother in mind at least. We only had pancakes in Ireland one day of the year and that was Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday and it was very exciting. My mother slaved away to make pancakes for all of us one by one but no one would have thought of having pancakes for breakfast or sweets with them. I suppose they were really craps but that's the kind she made. This one's called The Pancake Artist. She only cooked them once a year on Shrove Tuesday so we didn't dwell on the looming lentin fast as we raced home after school to see her lift down the big black frying pan and heat it over the blue gas burner until the fat spat and sizzled. She'd hoist the milk jug full of batter pour a creamy stream into the pan tilting and tipping it to a seamless circle. We hovered famished at her elbow as the humps and craters formed. Brown sienna over khaki burnt umber over buttermilk. It was all in the timing. One flick of her gifted wrist and she'd landed it like a fish on your plate. You rolled it with sugar, a squeeze of lemon, scarfed it down. Then it was back to the end of the queue until we returned, returned again. No rest for her aching shoulders until we were all contented sinners licking our lips as full as eggs. That was a great expression my mother had. She'd get up from the table and she'd say, I'm as full as an egg, which I could talk to some particles. But of course, like so many of us, I didn't appreciate the way my parents talked until long afterwards when I started trying to write poetry. And in fact, my father talked in similes, though we wouldn't have known what a simile he was if you'd asked him. But his whole speech came directly from the Irish. And you'd say to him, oh daddy, is my hair shiny? And he'd say, it's as shiny as a raven's wing. Or you could run as fast as a greyhound. It was just all that kind of language. And it was gorgeous. But of course, we thought, ah, that's just the old people. Well, let's see. But speaking of old people, or not so old people, I'll read this one from my husband, Daniel, who's an old man. Now that we're all old people. The cover of this book is the cup that I drink by coffee from every morning. Made by Daniel, religiously. And this is just a poem I wrote for him. It's called Mornings with Coffee. You always bring it in the small blue cup that fits my hand. It's smooth, full lip, familiar, comforting. The coffee's strong and black. A ritual perfected. No unnecessary gestures. No ripple on the palm of the morning. Once in another life, my silence masked the racket of the war inside my head. Made mockery of domesticity, devotion. And even now, most days, I fail to love the life I never meant to have. Distracted by delusions that the world is celebrating elsewhere, kicking up its heels, shaking out its tail feathers, getting on famously without me. Comes a moment such as this when a little grace kicks in and there's just this pleasure. The wisdom of our hands. No thinking. A couple of things. New York pieces here. What am I doing for time? Plenty of them. Plenty of them. Here's a poem. At one point somebody said to me, I think it was one of my relatives, would you ever stop writing about Ireland, get over it? And then my husband, who was wonderful and also a poet, said, but that's where all the stories are. Why would you get over it? Anyway, here's one that has several different memories going on. And it's called Sweet Aftons. And Sweet Aftons were the name of the cigarettes my father used to smoke. And they were gorgeous. I wish I had a package still. They came in little packets of ten and they were gold colored. The package was gold colored with gold foil inside. And on the outside was a verse from Robert Burns from Flow Gently, Sweet Afton. You wouldn't see it now, but it was gorgeous. Another thing is my father came from County Mead, so even though he left County Mead when he was sixteen, he still read the local newspaper, The Mead Chronicle, every week. Sweet Aftons. How I loved to watch my father savor the small indulgences. A packet of ten Sweet Aftons and the Mead Chronicle. The ink still wet on its whispery pages. He would sit in his armchair by the fire, a fragrant cigarette between his fingers. The newspaper opened on his lap, reading the news of friends and relations. Who would want the all Ireland hurling match? Who would marry? Who would die? The half closed packet lay on the table, its gold calligraphy curling over the side. Flow Gently, Sweet Afton, among thy green braze. Flow Gently and I'll sing thee a song in thy praise. It was a message from another continent, like Robert Louis Stevenson's drooping moustache, Nathaniel Hawthorne's high starched collar, or Louisa Mayalcox's elaborate ringlets on the pack of author's playing cards that Mammy's cousin sent over from America. Or the full-on lovers separated by a cruel father who gazed at each other from the blue and white world of her willow patterned plates. A promise of poetry, of mystery, of everything I dreamed about but couldn't name. At Christmas we save the empty packets to dress in raccoon paper, tie up with ribbons, dangle enticely from the tree. Beautiful we caught them whom knew nothing of art. Those exquisite mystery boxes, nothing but hope and a puff of air inside. I don't want to mourn thee, as my mother would say. Let's see. Here's a poem. I loved Burr's description of all this great-great-great-grandfathers and other relatives from right here in Vermont. My brother has been digging into our family genealogy on both sides of the family, but of course the sailors are far more interesting to me than the country people. But here's one about something that happened to my uncle Christie when his ship was bombed during the war. It's called The Sinking of the Isalda, December 19, 1940. You stand in the rain, drenched, miserable, waiting for the double-decker bus, when suddenly there it is, thundering toward you like a rogue elephant, the way desire came lumbering along when you leased and expected it, in the body of a man who looked nothing like your dreamboat lover, except for the color of his eyes and the soft taste of his skin that evoked your mother, perhaps and still a tangible ache. The first time you visited his house, stepping out of the daytime glare into the shutter-shaded living room, you cut the elbow-greased warmth of orange floor wax, mingling with the smell of the apple pie he had just finished making, rolling the pastry out on the wooden board that was stowed away neatly after use. No wonder you've glommed out to him for dear life, the way Uncle Christie must have glommed out of the wreckage when his ship, The Isalda, went down off the Wexford coast in 1940. A German bomber flying in solo, the men could see the red cross was in fact a swastika, hit her directly above the six-foot-high word's lighthouse service and the blue ensign on her starboard side. The ship staggered like a drunken sailor as Christie and the others toppled out over the side. He had never learned to swim, but clung doggedly to a spar and did not drown. Came back to regale his relatives on summer Sunday evenings over games of beggar by neighbor, gin, rummy, and endless cups of tea. When you found yourself foundering in the wilderness of late 20th century North America, you cast about for something solid dependable. How his rich voice resonated, thrumming like a lifeboat over the roar of wood splintering, everything coming apart. My timepiece too. One more? Two more? Let's see. I've been writing poems about birds lately, and that might sound like something every other poet has ever done, but I've been enjoying some of the connections between humans and birds, and also because birds are migrants and so am I, so there are a lot of connections. This one had a slide dig at my fellow academics at UVM, where I teach. It's called Withered the Ovenbird, because I too come from a long line of nobodies, and he is a small warbler with insistent voice and inconspicuous plumage. His song looms out in summer hardwood forests, teacher, teacher, teacher, as if imploring academics to lay down their dusty books, their medieval regalia. The Ovenbird has no time for such artifice. His olive-brown feathers, spotted breast and ruthless crown, blend with the woodland palette. Tawny soil, peaty sod, gray-green of mosses, autumnal camouflage. Extranquently creative, yet practical as bread, the Ovenbird builds a leafy dome like a Quebecois clay oven, part of his elaborate courtship ritual, his industry and open invitation. Come join me in my humble labor and help Levenin with song. Just read one more. This one is also about birds, but it was one of those poems where two different things connected and seemed to create something else. And there's a little epigraph from the Scientific American. Sometimes I make up epigraphs, but it's going to argue with me. However, this one's called Crow Time, and the epigraph is, it is said that crows like other corvids recognize themselves in mirrors, and this is thought to show intelligence. The last light of a winter's day, thousands of winged forms flap past my windows, pins pulled by a powerful magnet. The sky is black with crows, crying in cracked voices of their plans to steal what is left of the light. To gather their feathered shapes into a solid colored jigsaw puzzle of land and lake and sky that will click into place only when the last bird flies into its jagged aperture and darkens falls. Like the crows, my father showed up night after night to take his place in an ancient ritual, to play his fiddle, not by standing out, but by fitting in with the other men, those dark suited bus drivers and conductors who brought to the session all their quirks and oddities. Mr. Ward with his head thrown back, the accordion at rest on his round belly, Mr. Cure with his albino eyes, long fingers sawing the fiddle, and young Tony in short trousers tootling away on the tin whistle. Now my father too is part of that collective darkness, the puzzle that the crows remake each night, the dawn like a wayward child scatters joyfully each morning. Thank you so much. And thank you for being here, and thanks everybody for coming. And please join us down the road at the Kent for something cool to drink, and there's lots of yummy things to eat. And there are books for sale, and authors to sign them, and a wonderful exhibit to check out while you're there. Alright, thanks everybody.