This is a poem about--
I had a very disastrous youth really.
This is another poem about a youthful disaster.
My parents both worked when I was young
and consequently, I was very much to myself,
very much on my own.
And this is a poem about a time that I
was playing with my pet turtle in the sink in the upstairs
of our house, and a friend of mine called me out
and I went outside and left the water running with the turtle
in it, in the sink upstairs.
And this is a poem about what happened.
And it's called "Zimmer and His Turtle Sink the House."
[LAUGHTER]
"I had soaked the old house until the plaster bulged
like fungus from its lath.
Bead ferns grew in the rainbow spray of the waterfalls
down the carpeted stairs and the meter
in the cellar ticked off the waters of my mistake.
I had forgotten, gone away and left my turtle burping
through the water, running in the upstairs sink,
gone away and left the old house torpedoed
in filling with only a cold blooded helmsman on the bridge.
All the towels, old underwear, and mops that I could muster
never dried the house up, never turned the meter back
from what it told.
The turtle was gone, swept to the basement,
no doubt, where he had grown into a loggerhead, grumbling
and steel jawed like my father, angry at my carelessness,
ready to snap my digits off if I gave him half a chance."
Thank you.
That's fine.