I wanted to put the river inside a box. The marshy part.
So I could take it to my family and explain the meaning of a river.
But the river wouldn’t stay.
I taped a voice shut instead.
It wasn’t mine. It was a stranger’s.
And it was breathing inside there. Like an animal breathing when it is very
          calm.

I made a list of the synonyms for what a heron does to the sky.
One lengthens the sky. One peripatetics the sky. One gigantics the sky.
I made a gesture like I was taking all the wind in my lungs.
The title of this performance? Writing a contemporary American poem.

I took my family to the airport.
There are airplanes that use every bit of their lungs just to lift off the
          ground.
But not one airplane knows how to be silent.

The heron is more like an island of poured concrete somewhere in the
          middle of a lake.
The island would be a perfect square,
and it would be laid out symmetrically, and the houses would be painted
          white, very plain white.
And someone in the house would have thought to buy all these blank books.
Just to symbolize the anatomy of a heron. Can you feel it?
Clouds are being held in one place by an intricate system of cables.

We’re holding them until something happens.
But it’s impossible to hold clouds.
They don’t let you.