A few weeks ago, Kate found an old notebook of mine with a bunch of poems I wrote between 1997-2000. I thought these poems were lost. There are a few I hardly remember writing at all. I typed up a couple of them to show you what I was doing 10-12 years ago. 

THE HISTORY OF THE DINOSAURS

At some point I read a book on the history
of the dinosaurs. I was in a park.
I was about to flip through the last several
pages. A group of young boys on bicycles
began throwing rocks at me. One rock
hit me in the head and I lost consciousness.
I awoke to watch two trains collide
from my airplane window at 7000 ft.
Everybody else on the plane was asleep.
I checked the news broadcast on the hotel
television but found nothing. I’m living
at sea and my ship is being buried
beneath high waves. The sun has been
replaced by a giant electron.



THE GARDENER FOUND THE FIELD WHERE ALL THE POLE-VAULTERS HAVE BEEN HIDING

There is a thumping of mattresses
behind the brick wall.

The dry flowers think
they hear thunder.

The gardener thinks
he hears his mother’s heart.

He spreads the wall’s ivy
with his soil-rimmed

fingers and places his ear
to the brick.

His flowers will have to be patient.
The gardener will be too busy

building a ladder
from some scattered

aluminum poles half-buried
around the garden.



BEEKEEPERS, ASTRONAUTS, ETC

It’s as if these men
have been replaced—
the beekeepers, the astronauts, etc.
Let’s call for them
by the train load
pack them into cars
and drive them back
to suburbia by the thousands.
From now on,
let’s have our children
settle disputes with yardsticks
and colanders rubber-
banded to their faces.
I know, let’s teach America
to weld again.