Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I am David Kern and today is April 14th, 2020.

And today's poem is by W.S. Merwin, an American poet who you have heard from on this podcast before.

And the poem that I'm going to be reading is called Finding a Teacher.

But I was getting ready to record with my friends Heidi White and Tim McIntosh.

We were getting ready to record close reads.

And I figured I want to get Heidi and Tim in on this episode of The Daily Poem and help me explore this poem a little bit.

So Heidi and Tim are actually here with me.

Heidi, Tim, thanks for coming on the daily poem briefly here for a minute.

Thanks, David. Thanks for having us, David.

You've heard from Heidi on the show. She's filled in for me a couple times. If you listen to the network, you have definitely heard from Tim.

He hosts our show The Place the Thing and is on our Patreon bonus episodes and on the regular show and you know you're probably

familiar with him already so sammy is this your debut episode of the daily poem this by debut

nervous well i'm going to read as usual i'm going to read the poem as i said it's called

finding a teacher i'll read it once and then we'll talk about it together for you know five minutes

or so and then we will read it again and then that'll be it for today's episode.

But here is W.S. Merwin's Finding a Teacher.

In the woods, I came on an old friend fishing, and I asked him a question, and he said, wait,

fish were rising in the deep stream but his line was not stirring but I waited it was a question about the sun about my two eyes my ears my mouth my heart the

earth was four seasons my feet where I was standing, where I was going.

It slipped through my hands, as though it were water, into the river. It flowed under the trees.

It sank under halls far away, and was gone without me. Then where I stood night fell. I no longer knew what to ask. I could tell that his line had no

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