These are some of my favorites. I listened on YouTube the other day to Anthony Hopkins delivering Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. It was a recording from only seven moths ago. Perfection was achieved once more in the world.

I looked up my vacation photos from a trip I took to New Mexico with Yukio about fifteen years ago. It is mostly those that accompany my performances here. On that trip, we covered Roswell, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos. Yukio wanted to visit the International UFO Museum in Roswell—it is quite a famous thing in Japan—so that is where we started.

Later, on our last stop, I remember thinking that I had the best cup of coffee of my life the morning we had breakfast at a modest-sized, independent coffee shop right in the middle of the city of Taos—perhaps it was the altitude, but I will not forget it. We were a bit too close to closing time to get admission to Taos Pueblo; however, on the drive back out from the gate, we stopped by the road, and I got a few good photos. For one, the white horse in the brown field with a dark rock of a mountain against the clouds in the background.

I do not know exactly why we should not go gentle into that good night, but it is a poem I have read out loud and enjoyed ever since taking Mrs. Layton’s English class at Reed City High School in about 1966. Some people act out poems, and they might or might not do it well; I do not. I try to speak from the heart the plain truth of what has been put down in the lines. I love the interfolding of language and ideas in poems that try very hard to get to a truth about our lives, human existence, here on Earth.