Too Much White Currant Wine
String puller Sholto's picnicky feast
petered out
when the grain weevil came to Alderney
upsloping the sun-dried barleycorn
with a fete of meandering squirms.
In the tunic-maker's window box
a Cabbage White butterfly
bell-tinked the cabbage rose
and the hand-in-hand next doors
abstracted cold snacks.
As the fruit fly straggled on sugared silk
a moody breeze skidded easy-peasy
capsizing the lacquered skirts
of a quintuplicate of ambrosia bugs,
dog-hairing (a point of no return) their gippy tummies.
A bristle of fudgecake beetles
scraped pretty-pickle legs
underlit by the bottom-up salver.
But it wasn't until the honey ants
slobbered into the Tucker porcelain bowl
downturning in a syrupy realm of light,
that the upstairs maid, Jacquetta,
glumly threw up.
© 2003, Christopher Barnes
Image: WSU - Mt. Vernon
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