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[Music intro]
LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.
LYNNE THOMPSON: As we enter the month of December, it’s the perfect time to offer winter-focused poems although I realize the irony of that as I stare out of the window to face clear blue skies and a predicted temperature of 80 degrees! That doesn’t prevent us, however, from celebrating poems from those who can appreciate winter in ways that many Angelenos cannot. One of those poets is David Baker, the author of numerous collections of prose and poetry and the former Poetry Editor of the Kenyon Review. Baker has received multiple awards for his work including from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, among many, many more.
LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "After Rain" by David Baker.
After Rain
1.
You have to turn your back to the animals.
In theory it’s better for them than shoes.
You have to hold them one leg at a time
pinched with your legs to pick clean beneath each
hoof the sawdust, straw, mud-pack, pebbles, dung.
The old ones stand patient while the young may
stomp the hard barn floor to tell you to quit
or nod their long necks or quiver or huff.
2.
Rain has turned them skittish, the rain-flung leaves,
whatever flies or crawls from a cold tree.
The scrape of your moon-present blade, as you
carve each hoof hard as plastic or soft wood
down to the white heart, makes them want to grow
wings, makes them want to fly or die or run.
You have to talk them down. Easy, you say
in your own wind, soothing, easy now, whoa.
3.
But it’s the long, continuous sighing
breath of the file that still them, for they know
you are through. You round the last edges down
and smooth the hard breaks, as one by one they trot
through the tack room door, muscle, mane, shadow,
turning their backs to you. Now the sun is out.
Barn swallows brighten the loft. You watch them
break into flight, hoofprints filling with rain.
LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Depart-ment of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast will be available on the Library’s website. In the future, episodes will be available on iTunes, Google, and Spotify. Thanks for listening!
[Music outro]
- Back to Poems on Air: Episode 36
DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.