So Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower.
I have no idea how I'm doing on time.
I'm not going to go Cory Booker on you, but man, it's tempting.
It is tempting.
So I took one of my grandsons to the Galápagos Islands.
The other I took to the Peloponnesian Peninsula.
And I'll just-- there's a sequence
of poems from the Galápagos.
I'll read two of these poems.
A lot of these poems I wrote, as Katherine suggested,
during COVID, when I couldn't go anywhere,
and I realized I've gone a lot of places.
It's time to write those poems.
So this is from the Galápagos.
Iguana.
And the iguanas adapted there, because there
wasn't much to eat on the land.
And so they became capable of feeding
in the water on algae and various plant organisms
in the water.
So these marine iguanas are astonishing,
if you haven't seen them.
Iguana.
Oh, sure.
One or two beady headed monsters,
ridge backed, long clawed, blunt headed,
might have made it floating from Ecuador on a broken tree limb.
But how to explain thousands upon thousands queued up
in group salutes to the sun or lying together
by dozens disguised as rocks to spoon,
one spiny claw draped over the shoulder of another?
And then they wake, scurry in waddling gait to water's edge,
dive and swim, gleaning seaweed off underwater rock,
adapted, we say, like novel to movie, from land feeders
to marine machines.
No predatory neighbors.
It's just one long long beach party.
A sea lion or two lumbering up to sleep on the sand.
Good friends, says the guide, about every living thing.
Though, of course, eating is a factor.
Shark takes sea lion.
Pup Hawk takes turtle egg.
Flightless cormorants are the norm,
hanging out micro wings to dry.
They gave up building big wings.
So easy was the catch along shore.
In time, their prey will learn to fear.
But now, the immigrants make it look
easy to inhabit a place that never before was home.
No land, no springs, no rivers, just
every organism's joy to thrive.