Here is the little earthworm-eater, she-kiwi. She's in her frenzy of lust. There she goes in her flightless night journey, in mating season, warm in her fur-feathers poking her long bill, beaker, with nostrils at the tip sniffing and drilling scratching and uprooting with her powerful feet pausing, maybe, to let herself be mounted furiously and briefly by a he-kiwi whose odor is to her liking. Then there she goes again -- through the underbrush (followed by her faithful seducer) back to her @3querencia@1 to burrow down and wait and sometime later she stands up suddenly, and hatches a big egg nearly half the size of her little body. Finished, she steps away and the father-to-be steps in and sits on the egg warming it, sits and sits warmly, for three months while she-kiwi, lustful still, goes out looking to get laid again. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LONELY BURIAL by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET HOW TO BE A POET (TO REMIND MYSELF) by WENDELL BERRY BATTLE OF BRITAIN by CECIL DAY LEWIS THE WORD OF AN ENGINEER by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON CHARLOTTE CORDAY (REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL, JULY 17, 1793) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |