thank you card to a knot of blowflies caught screwing in midair

With all your sliding rules and abaci,
accounts you’ve been keeping so charily
I guess you weren’t exactly counting on
the pop of the flashbulb and all that would
follow: cottages, industries and so on.

You should know, a neighbor called the other
night to arrange a meeting in our home
for the discussion of our signing on
with their new “health drink”, which I may
owe to you and the convenience of my
name printed near the top of the ward list.

Oh, and thanks a bundle for your reps who
at even’s end, when all was awash in
peanut shells and stubbed-out smokes, still rolled
their sleeves to scoop vanilla, pop corks
and pass wine floats to the last ones standing.

But seriously, for real, thank you for
the apostle-ex-retailer who last week
came tottering up on a pulpit of slow
retracting walnut to kick everything
off with a review of Walden before
a congregation of ten million.

P.S.- And I’ll thank you for telling me of the last time we lathered and rinsed
with actual shampoo, and what to do now with all these bubblewands.