Classic Poem

eating fins.
living on buttes.

rusted sunset over shadow cabinet.
but nothing new is as new as a new tennis ball.
twist of the slotted key that engages the started tongue of tin that lets the breath in with a split hiss.
three shook balls are born into your palm like bleach-white baby chicks marked with bold black symbols.

& by the same token ha nothing dead is as dead as a dead tennis ball.
all you know grey & bald & sour to the nose.
abandoned or lost in the most remote veteran closet between a vacant mousetrap & a Blue Goose shoebox so.
so very very dead indeed that even if dropped plumb in a perfect vacuum from forty stories up it would not on impact with the solid sidewalk bounce one single solitary inch.
no sir.

yet we keep the key & spiral strip of separated tin & keep too our deadest balls in their original cylindrical containers refusing to do away with them or let them once lost stay so.

or consign them to the gnawing of the ignorant dog or dew no we keep everything.
party favors opera menus platform planks empty pens expired guarantees mildewed report cards home-made Valentines gone to gangrene Negroid negatives threadless spools exhausted jelly jars bulk ads that dent the mailman's back played games cancelled stamps Monopoly money worked puzzles parted laces solved problems penetrated mysteries hairnets limericks & keepsake heirlooms.
alas.
used up Nashes tarnished awards for running up mother-of-pearl pen-knives topheavy tops dime teeth calling cards grounds corks caps bulbs butts stubs bits.
debris d'empire shark'd up & never been discharged.
now our butte overlooks the great plain.
flat all the way to the straight hard-edged horizon line in the all-yellow precincts west & south of us.
broken if broken at all only by a single dark fin crossing the aforesaid sunset.