Nathaniel S. Rounds's poem drifts through a dream-logic night where nothing stays put. It opens with a nightjar whose eyes crave disaster and spectacle, then shows gold-leaved trees tearing up their roots to drown themselves in wine at a café after closing, while bugs devour them. It's funny and unsettling at once. The nightjar then feeds a quarter into a TV at a bus terminal and watches a porcupine and a pelican gamble, with the porcupine throwing the dice for both.
The poem then turns to the porcupine's voice. He says his best teachers were found outside school: an old movie dancer, a retired professor, an Irish grandmother. He lashes out at the snobs at St. Mary's, who he says drained a child's heart and tied his brain in knots.
The mood is playful, odd, and bitter underneath. The poem suggests that real learning comes from warm, lived experience, while rigid institutions can leave damage behind.