At first the two alligators didn’t like my poems.
They swam by just to look at the drawings of fish.
Each time they came I read a little more to them.
After a while they began requesting certain short poems.
They wanted me to read my poems about fish.
After a year of reading to them they were requesting
poems on other subjects like flowers and the moon.
They would crawl up on the land to bask in the sun
and listen while I read to them. Eventually more alligators
came to hear the poems. The little beach became so
crowded with eight hundred pound, fourteen foot,
reptiles that I decided to leave while they
would still let me. I told the first two alligators that I was
going. They asked me if I would please leave the book.
I thought that a strange request; but I left it, and as I was
walking away I heard one of them reading out loud to
the large gathering. There was a lot of tail thrashing,
and happy roaring as my poems floated over this
Jurassic scene.
