A short poem called "Underground Dancing."
I have several poems I've written about moles.
That's why I was able to make some intelligent comments,
comments about a student today who brought me
a poem about a mole [INAUDIBLE] Because I had done research
on moles.
I wrote this poem when I had a very bad back
and I was locked into a bedroom, freezing cold winter
four, five, six years ago in Pennsylvania
when they first started to use the word chill factor.
I don't think it existed before.
They invented it that year.
It's terrifying to know that there was not even--
worse than you thought.
There was the wind chill factor and there was a chill factor.
I mean, 10 below zero was nothing.
It was like a new dimension.
Terrifying.
And I was upstairs frozen in my chair,
and I wrote this poem, which I thought at the time
was a happy poem.
And I called my wife and kids up.
I said, listen-- there, I wrote a happy poem.
And this was this poem.
Out there in Pennsylvania, what they do--
and do in other places, too--
you put bags of fat in trees so the birds
don't starve to death.
You know, birds are greedy.
They have high metabolism rates.
They have to eat endlessly.
And never date a bird.
And so you have to give them a lot of fat to make them happy.
It's a way of killing birds off.
They die of heart attack.
Just give them cigarettes [INAUDIBLE]..
It's called "Underground Dancing."
"There's a bird pecking at the fat.
There's a dead tree covered with snow.
There's a truck dropping cinders on the slippery highway.
There's life in my backyard, black wings
beating on the branches, greedy eyes watching,
mouths screaming and fighting over the greasy ball.
There's a mole singing hallelujah.
Close the rotten doors.
Let everyone go blind.
Let everyone be buried in his own litter."
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]