Gallimaufry

Reaching for the vinegar over the range hood

(still dashing grass wisps on the gas flames

from the exhaust vent where we booted

                     that brooding sparrow)

I remember the rabbit in the Tiergarten

that perched on its spatula feet where the grass

had just started to green. The German clouds

                     were unibrow.

It's not the stretching, slightly weaving, that recalls it,

it's the tang of vinegar, Easter egg dye solvent.

And my gallimaufry gets going, guests for dinner,

                     the requisite foofaraw.

In the soffits of the staircase a rag and a featherduster.

In the eaves the nests made of frass and cellophane.

"When it rains on a golf course it's called Irish dew—"

                     Father-in-law's jackstraw.

"Dundee, is this an Aussie shiraz? Put it in the croc au vin."

Cellophane and frass. Everything in the canon

went into Gargantua before he was born from the ear beneath

                     his mama's cornrows:

Augustine, Aquinas. Aristotle and Plato. Virgil and Homer.

Goliards and troubadours. Thus an ort peeking out

from a nostril, skin flakes, a slight acne, undercoat

                     all colors, like a farrow;

the chuffer, snuffler, grunter, farter, pecker, whelp,

head half the size of the requisitioned teat

(Googling "mastitis" and finding "ewe," ew)

                     —the whole shebang

                     

reeks of bedstraw. On the radio, transrational statistics;

Brigitte Bardot lashing out at the leash law in Zurich;

on an uncle's fourth percussive sneeze the baby wakes

                     —interrobang—