Poetry

If you thought them rare, or worse, extinct,
think again. Assure yourselves
there is a land where they abound
like birds on a telephone wire at enormous dusk
preening and pleasuring in each other's presence.


And you are almost there--
just another hundred miles or so to paddle        
before that shore where you reach the beach the boat,
drag it over hot, pink sand, inverted, toward a stand of trees
near where rears a strangely quiet headland.


Out they slip, delighted to greet you
from between trees, singing songs in Portuguese
hands clasped behind them,
thin silks blowing like line-dried octupi, the golds       
of their Olympian ideals slung about their necks.

E-mail home you have seen them
in short, terse phrases; cc
everybody. Say, yes, of course, you want to be in their number.
But for heaven's sake, delete the expletives.
Yes, delete the expletive.