Here's one more poem, and you get
to hear me try to do a terrible imitation of David Byrne.
[LAUGHTER]
That's in there.
It's also the poem-- such a domestic person.
We've taken up gardening.
And the terrible thing when you start growing tomatoes
and things is that now, suddenly, you
see squirrels as the enemy.
And there's so much folklore involved
in what will keep squirrels away from your tomatoes.
So this lists all of them--
Irish Spring soap, which is obvious that'll keep it away,
and human hair, another thing, marigolds, and none of them
seem to work.
Called "Talismanic"-- it's the last poem I'll read.
"The boy's hair voodoos the tomato stalks.
We've swept it from the kitchen floor after haircuts.
And straw colored, it spirals from the garden soil,
already half-buried, like tablets etched with Linear B,
untranslatable among eggshells and soap flakes.
I kneel and watch it rain upon the diligent grubs,
beetles, and the zigzag caravan of ants.
The stalks nod with unripe big boys,
calypsos, green marbles of cherries and clusters.
Human hair, marigolds, Irish Spring I
flake with a cheese grater, and a talismanic circle charms
against squirrel and raccoon.
High summer evening, high 90s, and the boys run
tonsured through the sprinkler's spray.
The sounds, as it revolves, a quirky but robotic staccato,
like the voice of David Byrne cackling once in a lifetime.
You may ask yourself, how do I work this?
They will lay waste to the fruits of your labors.
Useless are all your spells.
For now, the wind is rising.
A thick, cheap scent over everything--
scent the color of key lime pie, scent the color of my father,
20 years dead, and stepping from the shower stall,
taking in the steam and deep self-conscious breath,
his own futile talisman against emphysema, angina, Jim Beam.
Soap lather beads his face.
You may ask yourself, how did I get here?
He is ash in a canister in the veterans' cemetery in St. Paul.
And his DNA helixes up the pale outline of Luke's spine,
glinting now in the sprinkler's jittery rainbows.
Let the water hold me down.
Back and forth, they pace the sprinkler's cage.
They squeal and turn to me in their delight.
Same as it ever was.
And the breeze pulls the spray toward me
until I am mist as well.
Lured by this instant, back to them
when I am ash, though I kneel absurdly
with the cheese grater, knee pads, and a flint head of soap.
Same as it ever was.
Sundown, mosquitoes turning, tuning up,
a gilt of fireflies slathering the Adirondack chairs,
my knees scrape eggshell, beflowered
with dead-headed marigolds.
And the tufts of hair billow up from the dirt to my face."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]