Martha reads a poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan called “The Long Up.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Long Up, A Poem”
One of my favorite hikes here in beautiful Southern California is to a mountaintop.
And every time I walk that trail, I think of a poem by Kay Ryan.
She’s the former U.S. Poet Laureate and a professor at a community college in Northern California.
And last year she won the Pulitzer for poetry.
And every time that I’ve been walking for a good half hour and I’m almost to the top of the mountain,
I think of this poem, and I wanted to close the show out with it today.
It’s called The Long Up.
You can see the land flattening out near the top.
The long up you’ve faced is going to stop.
Your eyes feast on space instead of pitch as though you’d been released.
The measured pace you’ve kept corrupts with 50 yards to do 50 times as hard against the blue.
And I love this grant because if there’s a better description for reaching a mountaintop or almost reaching a goal, I don’t know what it is.
Thank you, Martha. That was very beautiful.
