Here's a poem called "Day After Chasing Porcupines."
Which one member of the audience has experienced.
When you're a kid you go after porcupines
and you shoot them and you kill them
and you do all this kind of stuff.
But you've always got a dog with you.
And a dog always manages to get some quills in his nose.
I didn't learn until several years
later, that you're supposed to clip the quills before you pull
them out of the dog's nose.
Because the quills are full of air and they're
very solid in the dog's nose.
But if you clip them, they deflate and then
they're fairly easy to pull out.
Which doesn't have anything to do with this but--
[LAUGHTER]
It's sort of about a dog laying around the yard.
With his quill-- his nose still full of quills.
Rain came fog out of the slough and horses asleep in the barn.
In the fields, sparrow hawks glittered
through the morning clouds.
No dreamers knew the rain.
Wind ruffled quills in the mongrel's nose.
He sighed cautiously.
Kicked further beneath the weathered shed and slept.
Timid chickens watched chickens in the puddles.
Watching the chickens, yellow eyes
harsh below the wind drifting clouds, sparrow hawks.
Horses stamped in the barn.
The mongrel whimpered in his dream,
wind ruffled his mongrel tail.
The lazy cattails and the rain.