hi everybody thank you for coming today to the poetry reading and we're going to follow along a schedule so if the person before could introduce the second the next person on the list that would be great and the first reviews going to be david wrong gray is too poor we're flat dull even profane when describing the hair for the final ladies of new england gray is a battleship grey is the color for painted farmhouse porches to the discerning eye here is never this complexity is the record of a woman's life a collection of everything that has touched her head the granite dust of summer roads buckwheat flour on rolling pins wood stove hash of horrors in camp flint and gun smoke tractor grease your salt and pepper shakers main job streaks of nickel platinum caps all touched by the lead of sorrow the mineral to the mineral tones of tombstones of those you have very tense and shades of worry war and tragedy entices me so forgive me if on some early autumn day with purely innocent intent and with no wish to offend i lift the corner of your hat that i might feel the silk milkweed rolling through my fingertips and read the latest chapter of your life my wife lady jane grey if you will whose hair brush bears a trace of me on every broken silver strand has yet to brush me off or brush me out and i am the old gray louse steadfastly clinging to her  when we were snowed in for two days it's been titled in my son's eyes i know the smell of oak in pine of wood smoke mist and dandelion of summer sweat and white i know the depth of evening blue that sparkles from my boy of two who sobers me at forty one that i might not have had as my heart expands with father thank you for coming without an audience with the pretty silly may is my birthday each year when make comes i am born again like the grass the perennials and the seeds sprouting in the soil everything about every day even the rain says to me be born again grow here's a second chance to learn how little we know and to succeed at this growing thing called life this one is called for don james you could not know what i didn't tell you i had given up writing poetry life became too hard what more could i write that hadn't been written better by others i felt that all the words had been said then you called and read in his strong arms to me and you said you have a gift my gift is the gift you gave me confidence to keep on writing and now too and i will read in dad's in dad's strong arms i was in bed burning with a very high fever worried mummy called the doctor bring her in right away he said i don't remember my age what vehicle we owned being carried to the car or the car ride to the doctor's office i remember the way my father's strong long strong arms gathered the blanket around me  cradling all of me and of weightlessness as we flew toward the doctor's office the bed the cylinder made me feel well it hours but the way my father carried me made me well for my whole life this first poem i read in his from mary jane's workshop she helped me with this it's something that happened to a child with over a ten day and ten my period in the hospital it's called children's ward of america nine hundred forty nine i am in a black and white room black metal bars around the bed keeping me inside the white white walls sleep with no collar no voice only echoes of children crying down through grew years of isolation and always the on answered question in this children's ward when can i go home i am five years old but i am old nurse and white brings big needles that made my bottom burn sleepless in this strange bard bed there are no sweet dreams just pieces of nightmares i fear sleeping i fear waking up where is my sister joanne where is my brother bobby  bananas i will not eat the yellow i the egg with the runny white sitting on a metal plate under a metal cover it is cold it is ugly maybe it is dead it is a january cold outside here in our private home you are my furnace throwing of heat against my back around my arms and belly keeping me warm like two w inside out melting my core tears poured down my face from pleasure and pain we join as one again the fiery candles each night of our long sleep deepens the love we share as winter wears into spring and sun my heels that dark away are you here where are you there you are  it's called off i never used to be afraid of sharks i wondered what that was just beneath the placid surface and i decided that for once i would not simply just barge in slip in my whole new land body in between the enough i think all of us who live kind of in the countryside of beloved creatures to eventually pass away and that happened recently it reminded me of one awhile ago one of our sheep in this is called a day from miley it's when you have to put somebody down hold on girl it's all right it's and then your existence in her eyes vanished and her breathing evaporated into our silent excell ations softly interrupted when the young woman the vet's assistant confessed she was not handling it well we walked back together to the truck and thought it was better to pay the bill right than to close the ceremony so to speak after they drove away you stood in the rain as if in prayer and placed a muddy boot gently on one shoulder of the shovels blade and pushed it cleanly down through the low and this is a variation kind of on that theme but it was a dear friend who lost a while ago because who struggle with an illness it's called trillium while you welcomed what was to come we walked slowly down an ancient town road abandoned but still alive with stones revealed by the years of spring runoff in gently covered with the sweet decaying carpet of beach leaves goldens still despite the ravages of winter and we kept going on down picking our way over the ruts and windfalls looking for signs of rejuvenation and rocks to surround our garden it was cool raining softly and it felt good to sweat there were sounds but of the breeze flowing down the path behind us in the wood frogs the loading in the tiny ponds that were strewn about the along the pathway beyond the rock wall that gallop next to us all the way down the way into the deep most of the green the blackness of the weather rocks the damp coolness of the shade out from under a soft bed of oak leaves a petals for the first and maybe the last time the flower looks surprised and then as if to say  shaven addressed by god in the mirror do you think i roll seven and eleven every time electrified white sparks halo from split into this little head in a divine whisper see how i push adam's around with my own to the point everything is made corrupt too easily vanquished the silver circus morphing into a warning sign is if you roll snake this all the energy peoples many corpses to take a quantum leap backwards then give up your snapshots of dad before he went over the photograph with sat on small fable so long with sons can't even see them in the dark of their trailers from the black and white for the sons would have to imagine co roof metal bleeding orange red granite gatepost glint of mica in fieldstone but the sons are the sort to imagine their fathers chose but was it their women who chose each picture of the ground background shed and tractor garden well head plow breeders lift the former's hair they never indoors each smoke for ho favorite brand of smoked lucky camel chesterfield who cares say he survived a bullet and barmen to back till things change he's gone but women as always look to the laundry and housework and listing mobile homes they make the worlds of absent men who go around scraping up supper that often wait in a pan on a cooling back burner among these uprooted sons or a miserable few who mad metaphor there could be others like seeds with surfeit of nourishment whose fruit can never quite see if we extravagant vines will smother or else will turn it so bitter skin and slender muscles the trouble the same sweet surface we've watched and smiled with green for perrin flushed and hopped the head at every bend and we've looked up at a red tail tracing open script on th so clear and deep we might believe it's autumn no matter it's august still another fall be honest before we know it of course we adore that commotion of color but it seems to come together soon as it's gone the way the gleam off that poor mix coat even the fleas in its fur the various birds the last of creatures just to survive but i watch your back never have i wished more not  will i just miss this is called little squalls he stood at the sink drying dishes the usual thing except suddenly just falling down like that trying to play he might drop could all that since the crash will not with tears his wife had left the house for some meeting in town and that quick fall the thought of grew into a mild in a ruckus rushing she he saw how foolish he had been if he ever believed such things would last and last thing would be enough are arriving just in time i didn't like they've been thirty nine years in which there has been at least one child under a roof so i was dreading the departure of this left one who's a funny just the funniest towns of west bend and look downstream to where the water backs up by the fall boys want fish and fish there with butterball bait because a creamery churning by hard row and the trout was so rich because my ancient neighbor they tas like heaven but better try to stop on the bridge of no one's coming to see the back of the furniture mill in upside down the tail of the river the filming the day is clear and still i've lived here and driven this road forever strange therefore that i've never taken the same advice i'm offering you i've lived here but i through often been racing to get to work or else back home to my wife and our younger school age children the fifth and last of whom will be headed away to college starting saddam i hope i paid enough attention to her and the others in spite of the law on the plowing the bills the urgent concerns of career will be the first time in decades which may mean depression and if so indifference to the reverse reflection believes in the shade but more likely like you if you shrug off my coun moments the fire the entire band in the middle of a performance so rather volatile follow but a creator beauty i was thinking of beauty i surrendered myself t he was a person who seemed to believe his learned jargon might help the poor because his lecture would help to put an end to the exploitation of capitalism which paces wage at the ivy league college for which you lead the impressionable young soon  opiate perhaps and yet i want on for no reason to consider maori to elaborate and splendid jamaican shipping big oil's rusty abandoned barrels to play on with makeshift mallet toxic for even now i'm ready new faculty members at the university were allowed to live here for two years before finding other boarders and we became friends both new faculty  english department and when i would feel a little discouraged bad things maybe especially trying to master theory and writing my academic scholarly articles i he wrote poems about our family if you know writers some handy find things in their works that involve you bert my son whose dad had a terrible about our wonderful time together in chalk in friendship and it made something memorable and you know the size giv know this is not this is a cruel and beautiful april and may see this community and and my larger community something that she had asked me about and have and that i have observed and the point is as much about as it is about her but i think her children grand  with the sun colors the myriad possibilities of me painting with layla brought me into such a space where she became the dark as a six year old granddaughter at my size where she became the artist bringing me a long while together we painted our water hand placed near my store for shelter coffee and a bag of any use to share with jack in florida during the week to come in passing same nineteen twenty nine ninety six words and hope against her breast turning skating backwards to those days before she wrapped herself in the form of a woman being from a slowly rising moon the ice is translucent its dark depths reflecting the moon and the to of course the memory of your husband and your father will be trapped in this book she's not yet i am writing another i have for years she circulated each day's happenings as she made her way from porch to school collecting kamran news of such events as the muses motoring to sanford for a day of shopping and visiting or for her weekly column in the same for her we remember that what she gave you had her to plant by the kitchen s a full season later she died without a word and passed along to another together we mourn the giver of such yes in sprain your youngest brother pulled at his wife's feet startled by a death's interference with his after dinner was leaving you holding child to scatter over a grave thank you so much velvet lace maroon and bronze brocade and tequila sunrise organza the age is announced and presented with her razor sharp military escort and tall proud only after dancing too much in the summer rain do they surrender releasing their crinolines to pink and white dress with crimson trace oh to be here and me stand in passionate abandon at the summer ball so the reason i got placed last is that we are honored to have sidney leave here of vermont state laureate and we also decided to use this occasion with his cooperation to surprise our local honored celebrity missionary poet form jericho so tonight this evening is dedicated to mary jane and we have a couple of gifts that we'd like to give  each of you would come up here and i have a little piece we have a book to give you in a moment and something else and the what we have done is gather together poems from people who have been in your class or worked with you for you and this is the frontispiece to the book itself mary jane you moved from the north carolina tobacco farm of your youth to the academic halls of the university of vermont and the rural community of jericho for ten aprils of your retirement you have been the inspiration and leader for the jericho center library poetry month workshops in the most recent gathering we learned an adage attributed to north carolina grandmothers about proper southern havior self praise is half scandal we who are not constrained by that adage wish to acknowledge personally and as a group the enormity of your influence on us your presence your finally honed skills your literary knowledge and the deep vibration of your poetic soul have inspired us you set the frame and we join you in reading and discussing poetry then writing and sharing our own poetic stories you generously meet with each of us individually and courage ng and supporting us in refining our poetry in appreciation we all current and past students and peers share this collection of our poetic creations with you we celebrate with you the publication of your volume of poems tapping into the center you card not and would not say of yourself in the presence of the vermont state poet laureate sidney and this assembled group and over the objection of a chorus of north carolina grandmothers we declare you a personal and poetic tre never had a moment any grand or no except for the birth