My Stetson’s welcome, seeing that my hair,
thick as a furry animal’s in June,
is here in my October passing spare.
Unlike my words! They well from a lagoon
of similes. They cascade like a flood
of rhetoric to rage against the light.
They’re a lyric Lear-full sung by Elmer Fudd
who comes not that genteelly into sight.
I try to mitigate his senseless rant
with pearls of wisdom, but they don’t exist.
I winkle phonemes out of shells that can’t
be called sand free although they do persist
in staying pearl-less, peerlessly absurd.
I hear sea shanties in them, and my word.