This poem is dedicated to the nurses in the audience.
Any nurses?
No, only one?
Ah, there she is.
I know that nurse.
[CHUCKLES] Bob Houston's a nurse.
Mid-life career change, Bob?
Yeah.
And of course, I don't know how this one came about,
except I live over by the university hospital.
And also, there's some chickens in my neighborhood.
And I also feel sorry for nurses.
I don't know why.
One word, caseous, means cheesy, OK?
It's in the second line, caseous.
"Nurses."
"Early in the morning, there may be nothing in the caseous sky
but one cloud sailing over the forest,
high in the Rincon mountains.
Slowly, it begins making up its mind.
A handkerchief escaped from a coal mine,
while the miner, on his knees, picks his way forward,
unaware to the time.
Now a magician scarf going through its progress
and with its own kind of intelligence, after a while,
shapes itself into a chicken.
That's what the other chickens in our neighborhood
see all day going over them, stretching their necks,
like nurses in training, and go out
on a holiday, still forced to wear their uniforms,
not sure where to go.
For hours, they study it.
Some think it's coming closer, while the talented ones step
a little ways off, sit down on stumps,
make sketches, discuss, especially, its eye, which,
like an egg in cross-section, has
a blastodisc in the middle of the yolk,
with chalazas swirling off, the swirling
eye of a storm, a semi-precious stone.
Now they hear talk about an armada of bombers heading off,
with boys inside, thinking of home,
to rain sudden destruction upon the Germans.
In any case, hours later, they're up on the house
tops, lining fence posts, watching it pitch down,
copper weather vane thrown into a sidereal dump,
the doubters say.
But the hand of God, say others, and they almost
wave back, reaching up their sleeves
for their handkerchiefs.
And they're the ones who, hours later, don't feel like supper,
but avoiding the crowds, go into the day room, sit,
lights off, playing the piano, listening to themselves."