The next poem is entitled "The Garden of Eden."
And some people have told me it's obscure,
so I will give you a little background of it.
Some years ago, there was a flood in the Trinity River,
in Fort Worth, Texas.
And a python escaped from the zoo.
And he became the subject of many, many news stories,
and was dubbed Pete the Python, as only the press can do things
like that.
"People on stoic water wheels paddle down the Trinity River,
where a long python once threw panic into the marzipan
hearts of zoo marsupials.
He was celebrated, sung all the month that he lasted.
An Orinoco of days, he bent around trees
while they fired salvos of shots down the river to faze him.
Hero to the tabloids, a dapper Apollo,
he had the park to himself.
He slept in rosy trash barrels by day,
and dreamed of samurai sashes of lady snakes
draped on a tree, then of plump, plump kinkajous, tangentially.
Below Fort Worth, the cotton mouths, the green graved garter
snakes, the kings, since the one whose art transmogrified
on supple stone went beyond all glossolalia.
Whose simple pain writhed in the sunlight, tarred as a dragon
in a St Georgetown.
The python's gone, whose name was famous in the Trinity, who
coiled like a secret in the twisty succulents, safer
than anyone".