I used to watch the silver

salmons race to spawn

upriver by the light of dawn.

in such a hurry, they would

cause infrequent water spray

in hopes they’d not miss

their spawning day.

now they are no more,

I’m quite sad to say.

there comes a date,

oh, dear tentmate,

when I can’t tolerate

in close quarters urinate

propensity

for offensity.

in the greenness

of my yard,

I found a willing bard

to sing a myth, a tale

of nightingale,

a thing for him not hard.

after all, he was

a willing bard.

There be naught sharper

than a hawk’s sharp wings

That so lets her talon, in

midair, the bodies of birds

Less sharp in twisting flight.

Gucci, Gucci, goo,

I love you too, Drew.

I also love Sue—

and sometimes Lu, too.

quaint old nancy

engaged in knissomancy

when she lusted after gnostic

unpredictable events

such as whether she could be

somehow deterred from

paying future rents

or if there was a chance she,

our quaint old nancy,

might be placed in danger

by a tippling manger.

another orphic oddity of hers

that in the telling blurs:

oft by christians charged with

aggravated minimifidianism,

Our plugged toilet

We plunge

Our clotted waste

To expunge

To feed the lake’s

Voracious

Muskellunge.

how is it I’ve acquired

of late, at such an age,

the expertise to sculpt a verse

to word-paint on a page?