Here's a poem called "Robert Bly Gets Up Early."
[LAUGHTER]
This is a prose poem.
It's based on a real incident that happened some years ago.
"Robert Bly Gets Up Early."
"At the ticket counter at Minneapolis airport,
7:30 AM, standing in line, hand on my shoulder.
It is Robert Bly.
Risen like a silo from out of the dark Earth
for one last greeting.
He is flying to Boston to read, flying to Boston
with a satchel of red bees.
I have red bees in my bag."
I can't do that thing, you know.
"I will have no hesitation in releasing them
into your unconscious.
Robert Bly, organic foods, white poncho, vitamin E.
I get on my plane, sit down with Esquire, the New
Yorker and Greek lyric poetry.
I reach for my notebook to write down
a few bad lines about Robert Bly unexpectedly putting
his hand on my shoulder so early in the morning at the airport,
when a man sits down beside me.
It is Robert Bly.
This plane goes to Pittsburgh, but he has charmed his way
harshly past the stewardesses.
He flies simultaneously to so many places in his head.
Why should he not think that the Pittsburgh plane will take him
also to his reading in Boston?
[LAUGHTER]
Perhaps even directly to the podium.
[LAUGHTER]
What does this manic son of Norway want of me?
He shoves a small blue book into my hands.
It is by a young Norwegian poet who
was traveling around the country in a Greyhound bus
with his girlfriend.
Do we have money for him?
He asks.
His eyes crackle with a luster of vitamin E.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, Robert Bly, you are on this Earth
only briefly, like an angel with a hangover.
I see you striding, wings folded, across the main lobby
of the Minneapolis International Airport, pushing a vast plow.
From a shattered floor forms a tide of soldier ants--
Latvian attorneys, centurions, phantoms, admirals, minor poets
with half-open parachutes.
They flow out of the airport and into the landscape, determined
to turn the country around.
Oh, Robert Bly, get off my plane.
I have two readings of my own to do in Pittsburgh.
Robert Bly hurtles to gate 7A with a satchel of bees.
He gets on his plane at last.
He needs no charm now.
He has a ticket.
And deep in the poncho, he releases a bee.
The bee makes his way forward into the cabin,
crawls up onto the pilot's shoulder,
and croaks into his ear, 'Take this plane to 4th century
Tibet.'"
[LAUGHTER]