I'm going to do a trio of poems now, that all revolved around
an ambition to write poems that dealt with that sentence
that every typist knows because it contains
all the letters of the alphabet, the quick brown fox
jumped over the lazy dog.
And my ambition was to write a poem for every word.
So what you're going to get is "Quick Brown Fox."
I didn't do the--
[LAUGHTER]
And I hope you get it some day.
Quick.
Look, a baby one.
Wink of fuzz in the headlights and gray at back.
Now he peers through the culvert, all bobble
and twitch, vacant eyes, he's been through this bait
and switch all night.
Where's mother?
On the hill there crested in moonshine the fabled
silhouette.
Sleep curves, lumpening into a tail,
waving its flamboyant afterthought.
She disappears.
Red swish or gray.
Too quick to tell.
Oh, to be gone like that.
No grief nor thought of love.
Pure purpose poured into flight.