Small fry in a butterfly net, daughter contented
Herself with trying to build a usable bird's nest
Out of moss, twigs, straw, and leaves. When
She surrendered in exasperation, she asked
To watch a clip of a weaver bird doing his best
At making a perfect grass sphere complete
With a circular door that his beloved selected.
Then she caught a salamander. Then the wily
Salamander nipped her, hard enough to escape.
Then we went up to the cabin and watched
The 1939 Wizard of Oz, having read through
The first five L. Frank Baum books at bedtime
And neither one of us having seen more
Than clips, heard more than songs from
The famous movie version. The cleverness
And distortion of the thing caught me, raised
On Eraserhead, as much as the dancing
And displacement caught her. Oz in his nest,
Trying to manipulate the strings of a world
He didn't conceive, trapped in Art Deco
Spires of grass green he couldn't, until another
Alien came, leave, haunted me. I am the great
And captured wizard, nest incomplete, who
Still weaves, who saved his serendipitous means
Of escape balloon. Don't pay any attention to me.
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