This is a poem about that same time in my life.
For some reason, the army cleared me
for what they called top secret.
And then they never told me anything that was
very secret at all, I thought.
I couldn't do much about it.
I was an enlisted man.
And one day, they had some sort of message
that had to go into Las Vegas, which is about
60 miles from the test grounds.
And I was the only person around who was cleared for top secret
whether I was PFC or whatever.
So I had to carry the message.
And they assigned me to a one engine plane
with a commissioned officer who did not
like non-commissioned men.
And I was kind of rosy cheeked and swan necked anyway.
And so he thought he would just--
he was crazy is what he was and--
[LAUGHTER]
His name was Captain Lester.
I'll never forget it.
And he thought he would show me what was going--
what it was all about.
So this is a poem about that business about our flight.
It's called "Zimmer and Lester Flying Low".
"The plane shaved daggers from the Yucca plants.
Lester was amuck at the throttle.
One wingdip or one major itch would
have broadcast Zimmer in all on the sand,
would have jettisoned the worm meat off his bones
and dangled his tendons in the cacti.
Even the wall eyed rabbits ducked as bobcats heel
and towed away and Zimmer felt spasms in his cheeks.
Lester hugged desert for an hour or more.
He buzzed the sparkling dunes as flush and hot
as Zimmer's eyeballs up against their sweaty lids.
He blew the chacking thrashers down
into the sand and rattled snakes.
He flew the desert on the string of his audacity
as Zimmer powdered his molars in low fear.
Somehow, at last, they landed, gathering up the streak
that had been the Earth.
Amazed thereafter that he had not dropped and scattered
like some heavenly stool, Zimmer found the world
to be too slow for impact, too constipated for good movement,
and too easy now for his accomplished pace."
[LAUGHS]